Grizzlies do battle with Spartans, fall in closing minutes

Monday, November 16

San Jose, Calif.

8:00 PM (MT)

Montana

1-1

San Jose State

1-1

Montana

San Jos? State

Grizzlies do battle with Spartans, fall in closing minutes

11/17/2015 1:17:00 AM | Men's Basketball

Box Score

By: gogriz.com

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From the looks of it, no one told the Montana and San Jose State basketball teams that football is played on Saturday.

The two teams racked up a total of 52 personal fouls, and the normally sharp shooting Griz went 3-16 from three point range as the Spartans hung on through a late Griz comeback to defeat Montana 64-61 Monday in San Jose, California.

Coming off the high of beating Boise State at home last week, the Grizzlies needed a crisp follow up performance on the road to take a second win over a Mountain West opponent to open the season, but ended up in a dogfight that saw four players with four or more fouls.

"You always learn from adversity," said Montana head coach Travis DeCuire. "I'm not sure we were prepared for a dogfight though. I think we thought we'd come in here and they'd lie down for us, and that just didn't happen.

"The game was very slow. There was never any flow to it, but we had opportunities to do things to take advantage of the situation. We weren't very aggressive on either side of the ball, therefore we had way too many fouls."

The Griz jumped out to an early 6-4 lead over the Spartans in the opening minutes. The Griz then went on a scoring drought lasting nearly four minutes to slip behind 8-12, and would remain behind until Brandon Gfeller hit a three to knot the game at 13 with 9:10 left in the first half.

That would be about as close as the Grizzlies would get to a lead though for the rest of the contest, as three first half fouls would keep Montana's leading scorer Martin Breunig on the court for 17 minutes in the first half, but only seven minutes in the second.

Breunig finished the game with eight points and four boards in a quiet night for the preseason all-Big Sky senior.

UM was instead led by junior transfer Walter Wright, who finished with 13 points and six rebounds as the second leading scorer in the game. Wright also picked up four fouls, but stayed in the game for 33 minutes, leading the second half comeback attempt for the Griz.

Freshman Michael Oguine was close behind Wright with 12 points and sophomore Fabijan Krslovic put in 10 of his own in just 18 minutes of play before fouling out.

Montana improved to over 42 percent field goal shooting in the second half, but it was the 32 percent in the first half that kept UM just out of arms reach of the home team.

Led by Wright, Oguine and Krslovic, the Griz made a run late in the second half after being down by as many as nine multiple times in the opening minutes of the period.

Bobby Moorehead drained a three to pull the Griz within three at 45-48 with just under 10 minutes to play, and from there it was a game of cat and mouse as the Griz would inch closer, and the Spartans would inch away.

The Griz then had a chance to win the game late, as Brandon Gfeller went to the charity stripe and sunk both of his freebies to put UM within one at 61-62 with 14 seconds to play.

However, when the Grizzlies looked to put on the full court press, the Spartans snuck behind the defense and a lob pass down court resulted in an easy dunk from Princeton Onwas to seal the 61-64 victory for SJSU.

With the Montana post players in foul trouble for much of the game, rebounding was a key issue for the Griz as well, with San Jose State winning the battle of the boards 46-29, compounding the impact of a slow shooting performance.

"We didn't pick the right shots," added DeCuire. "We took some quick shots that shouldn't have even been taken, and that led to the low percentage. When we finally got some good looks, guys just didn't get the ball into the basket. We didn't have the confidence to knock down the ones that were there for us, but our focus was the reason why."

Montana outscored San Jose State 37-28 in the second half, but the first half proved to be too much to overcome, and the Spartans hung on for its first win of the season at 1-1. The Griz also move to .500 at 1-1.

UM returns home this week to take on Carroll College in front of the Montana faithful at Dahlberg Arena on Saturday night. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m., giving fans plenty of time to wrap up their Griz-Cat celebrations and take in another cross-state matchup on the basketball court that night.