Griz hoops hosts Carroll on Saturday

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The Montana Grizzlies are playing a game against a cross-state foe on Saturday. Bobcats? Don't know what you're talking about.

The Griz basketball squad takes on the Carroll College Fighting Saints on Saturday, Nov. 21 in a 7 p.m. tipoff at Dahlberg Arena, giving fans plenty of time to wrap up Griz-Cat celebrations and make their way to campus to see Griz hoops in an all-Montana double-header day.

THE GAME: The Grizzlies (1-1) will get a chance to improve on their home court, returning to Dahlberg Arena to face Carroll College (3-1) of the NAIA. The game is Montana's first of three non-D I matchups on this season's schedule, the others, a pair of pre-Christmas home games against Great Falls on Dec. 15 and Montana Western on Dec. 22.

"We're expecting them to come in and be well coached, execute their offense and do some things defensively that forces us to make adjustments," said Montana head coach Travis DeCuire. "It's an opportunity to work on us, and we're playing someone that is excited about coming in here and playing."

The Saints enter Dahlberg Arena fresh off a challenging tour to California where they gave the Pacific Tigers all they could handle before falling 72-79. The Saints then fell 93-58 to the nation's 14^th ranked Cal Bears in Berkeley. Both games counted as exhibitions for Carroll.

The Griz are coming off a let down performance at San Jose State on Monday, where 52 fouls between the Griz and Spartans made any kind of continuity difficult, and the Griz couldn't complete a comeback, falling 61-64.

"We need to improve. We didn't play very well against Boise either, we just happened to win," added Coach DeCuire. "It's early in the year, and we're about where I thought we were. We have to get better offensively. Defensively there's some slippage in some situations we didn't handle very well, but our biggest concern right now is our offense, and putting points on the board.

"It's more about us in this game (Carroll). We're going to go in, and increase our level of intensity and just execute on both sides of the ball."

WATCH: The game is available to watch on live stream at gogriz.com. You can listen to the game on the state-wide Montana Radio Network, with Tom Shultz bringing you the play-by-play.

SERIES HISTORY: Montana leads the all-time series with Carroll 25-12. The two teams last faced each other a year ago to the week, on Nov. 26, 2014 in Dahlberg Arena, with the Griz coming out on top 75-52.

Martin Breunig led all scorers in that game with 18 points and 10 rebounds for a double-double, and Brandon Gfeller was close behind, going 5-9 from three-point land for 15 points.

NEXT UP: The Griz head to Fargo to try to make it 2-2 over NDSU for Montana sports teams this year.

Montana faces the Bison on Wednesday, Nov. 25 at 6 p.m. (MT) to start a two game road trip. The Griz will depart Fargo and head for sunny Malibu, California, to take on the Pepperdine Waves of the West Coast Conference.

First things first: beat the Bison, the winners of the Summit League last season, earning them a place in the NCAA Tournament, where they earned a 15 seed and lost to No. 2 seed Gonzaga 86-76 in Seattle.

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Players Mentioned

Martin Breunig

Brandon Gfeller

University of Montana Athletics