Lady Griz make debut Tuesday at scrimmage

Tuesday, October 27

Missoula, Mont.

7:00 PM

Montana

Maroon-Silver scrimmage

10/26/2015 4:13:00 PM | Women's Basketball

By: Montana Sports Information

The Montana women's basketball team, last year's Big Sky Conference champion and this year's preseason favorite, will make its public debut Tuesday at the program's annual Maroon and Silver scrimmage.

The women's scrimmage will begin around 7 p.m., following the men's scrimmage, which starts at 5 p.m. Both scrimmages are free and open to the public.

Montana went 24-9 last season and made its 21st NCAA tournament appearance. But only two starters return from that team: senior guard McCalle Feller and junior forward Kayleigh Valley. Both players were honorable mention All-Big Sky last season and preseason all-league this year.

Tuesday's scrimmage will come three weeks after Montana opened the season with its first practice and kicks off a string of preseason exhibitions.

The Lady Griz will host Carroll on Wednesday, Nov. 4, and Great Falls on Monday, Nov. 9, before opening the regular season with four home games in eight days in mid-November against Seattle, MSU Northern, Pacific and Portland. Everyone can catch their breath over Thanksgiving.

"I don't know that any of our questions have really been answered at this point," said 38th-year coach Robin Selvig. "But practices have been good. I like what I'm seeing. This is a fun, competitive group. I feel pretty good about how things are going.

"We won't learn a lot from Tuesday's scrimmage, because we don't get to work a rotation and because a number of kids play outside of what they might normally be doing. We're not going to answer a lot of our questions until we play somebody else. You learn a lot more that way.

"The scrimmage is mostly a way to show the public the new Lady Griz team and get the young kids out there for the first time in a Grizzly uniform."

To aid your viewing experience Tuesday night, print off the following checklist and follow along at Dahlberg Arena.

1. The team will play four quarters, nine or 10 minutes each, and that's not just a scrimmage thing. Women's basketball is moving to four quarters of 10 minutes this season, which means one thing for sure: double the number of times the clock is running out and someone could do something sick.

Some of the other rules changes won't necessarily come into effect for Tuesday's scrimmage, but they will next week when Montana faces Carroll:

* Instead of media timeouts at the first dead ball under the 16-, 12-, eight- and four-minute marks, each quarter will have a single media timeout, at the first dead ball under five minutes. If a team calls a timeout before the five-minute mark, that becomes the media timeout.

Lady Griz basketball: Getting you on your way home within 90 minutes of tip or your money back.

* No more one-and-ones at the free throw line. From now on, teams start shooting two free throws after the fifth foul of each quarter, with team fouls resetting to zero at the start of each quarter. If a team is in the bonus at the end of the fourth quarter, that carries into overtime.

* Instead of teams having five timeouts (four 30-second timeouts, one 60-second timeout), with four carrying over to the second half, teams will have four (three 30-second timeouts, one 60-second timeout), with only two able to be carried over to the second half.

* The other major change approved by the NCAA rules committee for 2015-16 is the ability of a team to advance the ball into the frontcourt in the final minute of the fourth quarter and overtime periods, NBA-style.

After a timeout following a made basket in the final minute, teams can inbound the ball from the 28-foot mark in their frontcourt.

Teams also can advance the ball to the frontcourt after a defensive rebound or change of possession in the final minute, with a timeout, as long as there was no advancement of the ball through dribble or pass first.

2. With the departure of Shanae Gilham from the team, Montana has just 13 players for 2015-16. Six of those you have not seen play in a regular-season game. Guards Maddie Keast (#00) and Sierra Anderson (#4) redshirted last season as true freshmen. They are joined by four newcomers.

Forward Jace Henderson (#24), who will have four seasons of eligibility, is in her second season at Montana. She played for the Griz volleyball team in 2014 before switching teams last spring, a move that better sets her up to achieve her career goal of becoming a basketball coach.

The team's true freshmen include guards McKenzie Johnston (#32) of Helena and Taylor Goligoski (#23) of Hamilton, and forward Henny Hearn (#31) of Pocatello, Idaho.

3. Kellie Rubel played nearly 35 minutes per game last season running Montana from the point. That led to 24 wins and a spot in the NCAA tournament field, but it also left a gaping hole to fill. And not just her minutes, but her leadership, distribution (team-high 142 assists) and scoring (team-high 13.8 points).

This year's team has three point guards, with others who could play the position if necessary, and all three are playing well through the early weeks of practice. There is fifth-year senior Haley Vining, who is blessedly at full health, plus Anderson and Johnston.

"The point guards are playing well, which was a big question coming into the year," said Selvig. "That's our one position we lost almost all of our minutes and the MVP of the league. I want to feel like that position is going to be solid this year.

"Haley is playing the best she's played since she got here, and Sierra is playing well. She played hard all the time last year in practice (as a redshirt), but it's a different sense now. Practices are competitive because people are starting to battle for roles and playing time."

4. Vining joins Feller and Hannah Doran in this year's senior class. Only Feller, who finished third on the team in scoring last season, has starting experience. Vining has played in 67 games but seen limited minutes. Doran averaged 15.4 minutes off the bench last season in the first major role of her career.

"I really like what we're getting out of our seniors," said Selvig. "The leadership we're getting on the floor from those three is what I was hoping to get. With McCalle it was expected, but Hannah and Haley are playing like it's a this-is-our-year deal too."

5. Pay attention to Jace Henderson. (She says she is fine with pronunciations of straight Jace [one syllable, rhymes with base] or JC [spoken like the initials]. Lady Griz announcer Denny Bedard will go with the latter, as will announcers around the Big Sky Conference.)

Henderson played for the Griz volleyball team last fall before switching programs. The two-time Gatorade Montana Volleyball Player of the Year was three times voted all-state in basketball.

"Jace is doing well. We're really happy to have her," said Selvig. "She's got good basketball sense, and she knows what she's doing on defense." Two things that will get you playing time on a Selvig-coached team.

But the best of Henderson's attributes? Whether she scores 40 points or sits on the bench for 40 minutes, you wouldn't be able to tell if you bumped into her after the game. As long as the team wins, Henderson wins. And if it doesn't, she'll be the first one there to pick up her teammates.

Henderson is a real-life literary character straight from Norman Vincent Peale, who espoused: The way to happiness: Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Scatter sunshine, forget self, think of others. You won't be able to get enough of her.

6. Kayleigh Valley has made the move. You know the one, when players as underclassmen show flashes of what they could be, then become a consistent version of that at some point later in their careers.

In recent years Katie Baker did it. Jordan Sullivan did it. Last year Rubel did it. Valley started to make the move during Montana's Big Sky Conference season last winter. It feels like she's arrived, like Selvig knows what he's going to get on a consistent basis, which is just what this newcomer-heavy team needs.

"Kayleigh seems more comfortable with another year of maturity," said Selvig. "She's been good every day in practice and good in both scrimmages, so I think we're going to get more consistency this year."

7. Third-year assistant coach Sonya Rogers is now Sonya Stokken, so don't get rattled during introductions. She married former Griz track and field athlete (and fellow Lewistowner) Evan Stokken last summer.

Stokken finished seventh in the decathlon at the Big Sky Conference outdoor track and field championships as a sophomore in 2009, fifth in 2010 and eighth in 2011.