Montana returns to NCAA tournament

The Montana soccer team will be making its fourth NCAA tournament appearance, its first since 2011, when it faces Washington State on Friday night in an opening-round match.

The Grizzlies (7-8-6) and Cougars (12-5-1) will square off at 8 p.m. (MT) at WSU's Lower Soccer Field in Pullman.

Coverage: The game will be available online through WSU Live Stream.

Tournament bona fides: The Grizzlies are making their fourth tournament appearance, their first since 2011, when they lost 3-0 on the road against Stanford, that year's overall No. 1 seed and eventual national champion.

Montana lost a first-round game at Texas A&M, 2-1, in 1999. In 2000, Montana won a play-in game in Missoula against Northwestern State, 6-0, then went on the road and won 1-0 at Washington State in a first-round game. That run ended with a 5-0 loss at Washington in the second round.

Washington State is playing in the NCAA tournament for the seventh time in eight years and 12th time overall. This is the fifth time the Cougars are hosting a tournament match.

Last year Washington State won an opening-round game at No. 8 Central Florida 1-0. The Cougars got by No. 20 Tennessee in Gainesville, Fla., in penalty kicks in the round of 32, then lost at No. 16 Florida 1-0 in double overtime with a spot to the national quarterfinals on the line.

How they got here: Montana, as the No. 5 seed, won three matches in five days, all by shutout, all over higher seeds, to win the Big Sky tournament in Ogden, Utah, last week.

The Grizzlies defeated No. 4 Northern Arizona 1-0 in the quarterfinals, No. 1 Weber State 2-0 in the semifinals and No. 3 Northern Colorado 1-0 in the championship.

Senior forward Janessa Fowler, who scored twice, was named tournament MVP. Sophomore forward Alexa Coyle scored Montana's other two goals, including the game-winner in Sunday's title match, to make the all-tournament team.

Senior center back Taryn Miller, sophomore outside back Taylor Hansen and sophomore goalkeeper Claire Howard, all part of a defensive unit that allowed just nine shots on goal in three matches, joined Coyle on the all-tournament team.

Washington State received an at-large bid out of the Pac-12, which does not hold a conference tournament.

Familiar foes: The two programs have played 20 times, dating back to Washington State's 6-0 win in Pullman in Montana's debut season in 1994.

The Grizzlies would go 5-1-1 against the Cougars in their next seven meetings, capped by Montana's 1-0 win in the 2000 NCAA tournament.

Since then it's been all Washington State, with the Cougars going 10-1-1 against the Grizzlies in their last dozen matchups. Montana's last win in the series came in 2004, a 2-1 overtime victory in Missoula.

The teams met earlier this year in Pullman. The Cougars scored less than two minutes into the match and led 2-0 at the half on their way to a 3-1 victory.

Washington State leads the series 12-6-2 and is 8-2-1 at home against Montana, with six straight wins.

The Big Sky and the NCAA tournament: This is the fifth consecutive season -- and ninth time in 10 years -- that the Big Sky's representative is going up against a team from the Pac-12.

The Big Sky hasn't advanced beyond the first round in the NCAA tournament since Weber State got by BYU in penalty kicks in 2005. Idaho State got by Utah in PKs in 2003 in the first round.

The league's only NCAA tournament win -- shootouts officially go down as ties -- came in 2000, when Montana won at Washington State.

Overall the Big Sky is 1-19-2 in NCAA tournament matches, 2-19-2 if Montana's play-in victory over Northwestern State in 2000 is counted.

Season at a glance (Montana): The Grizzlies had just one win (1-6-4) when the calendar flipped from September to October, with just five goals scored in those 11 matches, but it's been a lot of success since then under first-year coach Chris Citowicki.

Montana is 6-2-2 in October and November and has been shut out just once in those 10 matches.

Should you be willing to overlook Montana's 2-1 loss at Cal Baptist the weekend between the end of the league's regular season and last week's tournament, the Grizzlies allowed just one goal in their last six matches against Big Sky opponents.

Season at a glance (Washington State): The Cougars opened the season 10-0-0, with just five goals allowed -- WSU's 3-1 victory over Montana came during that stretch -- to reach No. 7 in the national poll. That start included a 1-0 victory at then No. 8 UCLA.

But five straight losses followed: a 0-2 road trip to then No. 20 Colorado and Utah, a 3-2 home loss to then No. 2 USC and a 0-2 road trip against a pair of unranked teams in Arizona State and Arizona.

The Cougars lost to Arizona State by the same score, 3-1, Montana did when the Grizzlies visited Tempe in late August.

That losing streak dropped Washington State out of the national poll, but the Cougars have gone 2-0-1 in their last three, all at home, including a 1-1 draw against Stanford, one of only two matches the 17-0-2 Cardinal, the NCAA tournament's top overall seed, didn't win this season.

Washington State is 9-1-1 at home this fall.

Next up: The winner of Friday's match will advance to face either Central Connecticut State (16-1-2) or unbeaten Georgetown (17-0-3), the region's No. 1 seed, on Friday, Nov. 16. Those two teams play on Saturday at Georgetown's Shaw Field.

Game-day insider:

First-year Griz coach Chris Citowicki had an idea of how he wanted his team to play when Montana opened the season in August. With passion, with high energy, with relentlessness from the opening whistle until the final horn.

It was all just a vision and a hope until Sept. 14. That's the first time he went up against Washington State, and he got to see in an opponent what he wanted from his team.

Yes, he had program envy, and it just happens to be the opponent his evolving team will face on Friday night in Pullman.

"It was in my mind ever since that match. How do I get my team to play with the intensity they have?" he said. "That team became my benchmark. They were awesome to watch.

"To be honest, it was inspiring. We lost, which I was annoyed with, but it taught me the level we need to get to."

It would be exactly one month later, on Oct. 14, when Citowicki finally saw a version of Washington State in his own team. All it took was for Senior Day to arrive.

"It's always an emotional day, and that's what had been lacking for us," Citowicki said. "On that day you forget about yourself and play for your seniors and the people around you. That was the catalyst."

The result from that day shows a 0-0 draw, but it came against a team that had won its previous four matches by 2-0 scores and entered the match red hot.

Not only did the Grizzlies cool off the Lumberjacks, but Montana had the better chances to win. As Janessa Fowler said afterwards, it was the first time all season the team had played Griz Soccer.

"Something changed in the culture that day. They started playing for each other, more than just playing for themselves. I wanted to take the emotion of Senior Day and make it that way all the time," said Citowicki.

The results were immediate. Montana swept the Portland State-Sacramento State road trip for just the second time since 1998, blitzing the Hornets 3-1 and giving the program its most goals in a match since early in the 2017 season, to qualify for the Big Sky tournament.

(Quick break: Forget anything about the Cal Baptist match here, other than the way the team played in the second half after being down 2-0 at the half.)

Last week: the league tournament in Ogden, and if anybody thinks it was a fluke, they didn't watch the games. Montana beat all three opponents. They weren't fortunate, and it wasn't about lucky bounces. The Grizzlies were better offensively, outshooting all three, and better defensively.

It was 2013 when the last team won the Big Sky title without allowing a goal, but when Weber State did it that season, it was a four-team tournament, and the Wildcats didn't win both matches. They tied in the championship match and advanced in a shootout.

The last team to claim the title without allowing a goal while also winning all its matches? Weber State in 2004: 2-0 over Portland State and 1-0 over Montana.

So yes, it's safe to say it was a historical performance by the Grizzlies on Wildcat Soccer Field last week.

And by "Grizzlies," that means everyone who traveled to Ogden. Only 13 players saw action in the three matches, but it was a team effort.

"If our bench didn't travel, we're not going to win any of those games," said Citowicki. "It was the energy of the bench coming off the sideline that got into the heads of everyone we played against.

"We had an extra player on the sideline, and that catapulted us through the tournament."

And now comes Washington State, which is not Northern Arizona or Weber State or Northern Colorado. It's a team that's been to the NCAA tournament often and has had success on the national stage.

But this isn't the Montana that Washington State has on mental record either. The Cougars led those Grizzlies 1-0 less than two minutes in and had Montana on its heels from the start.

It's what Montana did at Sacramento State, going up 2-0 on the Hornets in the first 15 minutes. And it's what the Grizzlies did in Ogden, not once, not twice but three times.

"We have that energy now that we can go at teams for 90 minutes, just like (Washington State) went at us for 90 minutes," said Citowicki. "They aren't going to be able to come out and lay us out in the first 20 minutes. We have too much confidence going into this one.

"We didn't have the energy we have now. We didn't have the organization we have now. We didn't have the confidence and belief we have now.

"It still might be too early to measure ourselves against them, but our culture is getting where I want it to be. Let's see if our culture can dent their culture and actually compete with it."

More storylines:

* Sophomore forward Makamae Gomera-Stevens scored twice against Montana in the teams' first meeting, putting the Cougars up 2-0 at the half with goals in the second and 34th minutes. She picked up a red card in WSU's victory over Washington last week and will have to sit out Friday's match.

* Junior forward Morgan Weaver had a hat trick against Washington and was named Washington State's lone first-team All-Pac-12 selection on Wednesday. She leads the team with 12 goals and 28 points.

* Five teams from the Pac-12 made the tournament. Stanford, the defending national champion, is the overall No. 1 seed. UCLA, which lost to the Cardinal in last year's title match, is a No. 2 seed, USC is a No. 4 seed. Arizona and Washington State are unseeded but both are hosting games this weekend.

* Since allowing just five goals through their first 10 matches, the Cougars have given up 16 in their last eight, with no shutouts.

* In addition to playing all 270 minutes in Ogden as an outside back for a defense that didn't allow a goal in three matches, sophomore Taylor Hansen assisted on three of Montana's four goals at the tournament.

* Janessa Fowler's first six career goals came via penalty kick. Her first career "live" goal was the game-winner against Northern Arizona in last week's quarterfinals, when she took a nice feed from Hansen and scored from in front with a defender draped on her back.

* She added another live goal two days later, scoring in the 32nd minute to make it 2-0 against Weber State. She was fed in the box by Taryn Miller, who took a pass from Hansen. Both players picked up assists on the play.

* Alexa Coyle has a team-leading six goals. It's the most for a Montana player since Hallie Widner led the team in scoring in 2014 with seven.

* Coyle scored the game-winner against both Weber State in the semifinals and Northern Colorado in the championship, giving her four goals in the team's last six matches. Three of those have been game-winners.

* Coyle had a spin-and-shoot goal from outside the box against the Wildcats, the type of goal Washington State can score but not many others in the Big Sky can pull off. Against the Bears she had an in-full-stride left-footed touch score, also not the average play.

* Sophomore goalkeeper Claire Howard didn't allow a goal in three matches at the Big Sky tournament. That upped her shutouts this season to 10, which matches the program record held by Kristen Hoon from 2012. It's the most shutouts by a sophomore in program history.

* Howard now has 17 shutouts before the end of her sophomore season and already ranks third in program history. Kailey Norman's record of 24, from 2013-16, is on notice.

* Citowicki went just two deep into his bench in three tournament matches, playing freshmen Kylie Hanson and McKenzie Kilpatrick in all three.

* Montana's back line -- Taylor Hansen, Taryn Miller, Caitlin Rogers, Avery Adams -- never left the field, nor did midfielders Ali Monroe and Ellie Otteson or forward Alexa Coyle.

* Taylor Hansen totaled three points at the tournament, on three assists. She went into the week with one point in her career, on an assist last year as a freshman against Air Force.

* McKenzie Warren, who assisted on Coyle's game-winner in the championship match, and Taryn Miller, who got an assist on Fowler's goal against Weber State, also picked up their first points of the season at the tournament.

* Citowicki is the second consecutive Griz coach to lead Montana to the NCAA tournament in his first season as coach. Mark Plakorus did the same thing in 2011.

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Players Mentioned

Avery Adams

Alexa Coyle

Janessa Fowler

Taylor Hansen

Kylie Hanson

Claire Howard

McKenzie Kilpatrick

Taryn Miller

Ali Monroe

Kailey Norman

Ellie Otteson

Caitlin Rogers

McKenzie Warren

Hallie Widner

University of Montana Athletics