Lady Griz Rewind :: 1989-90

In her final game as a 49er, Vicki Austin watched from the bench as her team lost 74-64 to Tennessee in Austin, Texas, at the 1987 Final Four. She had a DNP on the box score: did not play.

There would be no memorable headlines that came from the game: AUSTIN LIGHTS UP AUSTIN, LADY VOLS.

Then a sophomore, Austin looked on that day as another sophomore point guard, teammate Penny Toler, put up 23 points and six assists against a team that would win the national championship two days later with a 67-44 thumping of Louisiana Tech.

Austin was good but only a select few in Long Beach State's storied decade of the 80s -- when the 49ers went 248-48 under coach Joan Bonvicini and made six Elite Eights and two Final Fours -- came close to approaching the talent level of Toler, who would be voted a Kodak All-American as a junior and senior.

And everyone knew Bonvicini tended to go all in on her stars and her starters.

"Joan played pretty much her first five, maybe six, and that was pretty much it," says Austin, who today lives in Omaha, Neb., and for the last 25 years has worked in the state's Department of Corrections.

On the one hand, Austin had a roster spot on a team that had just gone 33-3 and proved it belonged among the nation's elite. On the other hand, Austin was a competitor, and Toler wasn't going anywhere or having her minutes cut.

After her sophomore season, she met with Bonvicini, who reached out to Montana coach Robin Selvig about a point guard from East Moline, Ill. Was he interested?

It wasn't long before she was a Lady Griz.

"It was pretty simple. I just wanted to play. Long Beach had a lot of great players on the team, and I wasn't playing, so it was pretty simple. I thought I had the chance to get some good minutes at Montana," she says.

Austin redshirted in 1987-88, when Montana was going 28-2, its two losses by a combined four points, including a 74-72 overtime loss at home to Stanford in the NCAA tournament that drew 8,709 fans. That came a month after Montana brought in 9,258 for its home win over Montana State.

"I knew the competition would still be good. I thought it was a big-time program, especially the crowd," Austin says.

"At Long Beach, we only averaged maybe 200 people. Maybe. Coming to Montana, the crowd was great. I couldn't wait. The year I redshirted, that year couldn't have gone fast enough."

Given her chance to return to the court in 1988-89, Austin, whose pull-up, mid-range jumper was almost automatic, averaged 10.6 points on 51.7 percent shooting and nearly four assists per game.

It was a team that had one of the best starting five in program history: seniors Lisa McLeod and Cheryl Brandell, Austin and fellow junior Jean McNulty and precocious freshman Shannon Cate.

The team would go 27-4, winning an NCAA tournament first-round game over Cal State Fullerton before falling to powerhouse Texas on the road in the round of 32.

"Vicki had such great leadership skills at the point," says Cate. "She was not afraid to be a vocal leader and take charge. She didn't care if it made you mad. She was going to be the general out there."

Going into the 1989-90 season, McLeod and Brandell were gone but a strong team would return, as seemed to be the case every year for the Lady Griz by that time under Selvig.

Seniors would depart and players with two or three years of time in the program would be ready to fill the empty spots and take the vacated minutes, much to the chagrin of the other coaches in the Big Sky, who saw no end in sight to the juggernaut that had already taken over the league.

Austin would run the show, McNulty and Cate would provide a bulk of the scoring, seniors Kris Haasl and Linda Mendel would fill the center position and junior Marti Kinzler was ready to take over the two-guard spot.

Then a few days before Thanksgiving, a few days before Montana was going to open its season at home in its annual grudge match against Washington, Austin got to the basket in practice, used a shot-fake and scored.

"I came down and that was the end of that," she says. "I didn't land on anybody. I just went up and came down and my knee blew.

"I knew. I heard the tear. Then it swelled up immediately, so I knew it was done."

Just like that, a season with so much preseason promise had been replaced with, if not doubt at least some disorder.

"We were anticipating having an experienced point guard who was really, really good. Vicki could pass, she could score. It was quite a blow at the time," says Selvig.

"It raised the question of, What are we going to do now? Who is going to step up? It kind of changed the complexion of the team."

It was just days until the Washington game, and seasons don't take a timeout (though 2020 should have me reconsidering that claim), a break to regroup and reassess.

The team entered scramble mode. The clock was ticking until the Huskies, who had made the Sweet 16 the year before and were going to be even better in 1989-90, would unleash their pressure defense on whichever point guard the Lady Griz had with the ball in her hands.

The options: sophomore Julie Epperly, who had totaled nine assists in limited minutes as a true freshman the season before, or true freshman Joy Anderson, who had joined the program out of Hutchinson, Minn.

Of course there was another option to consider: Cate. It was a hunch of Selvig's, and who was going to doubt him? Except maybe Cate herself.

"I recall being at practice and Rob putting me at the point. He had me do a couple reps and I think I cried maybe two or three times," she says. "By the end of practice, I'd say I felt minutely comfortable running a few things.

"That was one of his best traits as a coach, understanding that we were only going to do a few things but do them well when we faced some adversity."

Selvig says, "Even though that was a different position for Shannon, she was such a good, all-around player that I just decided to go with that.

"We didn't have a whole lot of practices to change what we were doing."

Epperly got the start but would have seven turnovers in 19 minutes before Selvig went to Cate. She ran the best play there was that day: getting the ball to McNulty, who would finish with 30 points on 15-of-24 shooting.

Cate? She totaled what would be a career-high 11 assists.

"I remember the game and being put at the point, and Jean kind of had the hot hand. We kept running a couple things. My job was basically to get the ball down the floor and get it to Jean," says Cate.

"She was making turnaround jumpers from all over the baseline. Her turnaround was untouchable, so if she was on, you were in trouble."

But it wasn't good enough. Washington, which was 1-0 after a win at home over No. 5 Texas the weekend before, entered the game ranked No. 16 nationally and would only go up from there.

Led by Missoula Sentinel graduate Karen Deden, the Huskies went 25-2 through the regular season, with a four-point loss at DePaul, which would make the NCAA tournament as a No. 8 seed, and road loss at Stanford, which would go 32-1 and win the national championship.

The Cardinal's lone loss that season? At Washington, which would lose in the Elite Eight to Auburn, the team that fell in the national championship game to Stanford.

Despite the heroics of McNulty and Cate, Washington built a 39-31 halftime lead and went on to post a 67-58 victory to snap Montana's regular-season, home-court winning streak at 60 games.

"Experience like theirs just doesn't fold," said Selvig after the game. "That's as good a pressure defense as there is in the country."

"It was a nice experience all the way around," said Washington coach Chris Gobrecht, who was able to use a gentler postgame tone than she had two years earlier, when her ranked team left Missoula with a humbling 78-57 loss.

If Epperly was shaken by the experience, it did not carry over. She would dish out 20 assists over the next three games and Montana would win its next six. Epperly would lead the Big Sky Conference in assists that season at more than five per game.

Montana would win the Domino's Pizza Classic with victories over Portland and Kansas State (MVP: Cate, who averaged 22.5 points and 9.5 rebounds), then improve to 3-1 with a road win at BYU.

In a game that was tied at the half, McNulty pulled Montana to a 78-69 win with 29 points on a day Cate went 5 for 14.

"We were just a nice combination. The best was when we were both hot, but it seemed when I had a bad game, she had a great game and vice versa," says McNulty.

The 1989-90 season, which would end 27-3 and at the NCAA tournament, was no anomaly, but this was: Just five times in program history has a player averaged 20 or more points in a season. Two of those came that winter, with McNulty averaging 20.4 points, Cate 20.3.

One of those players led the team in scoring every game that season, and it started early, when Cate scored 28 points, McNulty 27 in an exhibition win over a team of all-stars from Australia.

"We missed Lisa (McLeod) and with Vicki out, we lost so much scoring, so we had to step up. And Rob gave us the green light, so that was a very fun year," says McNulty.

They were high-volume shooters but more than that they were high percentage. Cate would shoot 52.1 percent on the season, McNulty 48.3.

"Both Jean and Shannon were really good scorers who shot for a good percentage that year," says Selvig. "Our two forwards were really a load that season. They could really score it.

"And their teammates did a good job of getting them the most shots. In all the years, we played a certain way but you also play to your strong points, whatever it was. That was a year we had two kids who could score inside and outside. They were tough to handle."

The two would pile up numbers never seen before in program history and finished first and second in the Big Sky in scoring, Cate at 609, McNulty, who missed a game, which is why she had a higher average, at 591.

They both blew by Marti Leibenguth's single-season scoring record of 497 points, which she set in 1987-88, before the end of the regular season. Just six times that season were both held below 20 points.

"We did great together. It was frustrating what the media did to us. They kept writing in articles, McNulty leads Cate for the scoring lead, Cate lead McNulty, who is going to get the scoring record?" says McNulty.

"It frustrated us both horribly. We just wanted to win ball games."

Which they did, sweeping a trip to Utah with wins over BYU, the Utes and Southern Utah to improve to 5-1.

The victory at Utah, a team that would make the NCAA tournament as a No. 12 seed, was one of the best of the season, because of the opponent, the venue and the way it came to be.

The Lady Griz were down 24-12 early on but used a 15-0 run in the second half to pull away.

"It was a great win, especially the way it was done," said Selvig after the game. "It was great to see us suck it up and come back like that on the road."

No surprises here: Cate led both teams with 26 points on 10-of-13 shooting, McNulty added 21 on 8-of-16 shooting. Montana shot 53.1 percent.

After improving to 6-1 with a 57-44 home win over Gonzaga, notable in that McNulty sat out with an injury -- to the rescue: Kinzler with 11, freshman Patricia Olson with 10 off the bench -- Montana headed to the Bay Area for a pre-Christmas tournament at California.

For its opener, Montana got a 7-2 San Francisco team. And for 25 minutes, things were tight but trending in the favor of the Lady Griz, who led 33-29.

Then Joy Boyenga happened. She sparked a hard-to-believe 32-8 run for the Dons, who would build their second-half lead to 20 points.

Boyenga scored 31 off the bench, going 10 for 21 with four 3-pointers as San Francisco won 70-61.

Asked about that game, Selvig searches his memory for the player who did so much destruction that day. Given her first name, the coach quickly fills in the rest. "Boyenga," he says.

"I remember that game totally. We couldn't find an answer for her. She got away from us. We couldn't stop her.

"They ran a certain play and I wasn't telling the girls the way to defend it correctly. I remember watching video afterwards and thinking, Gosh, I should have had us try something different."

Behind 18 points from McNulty and 17 from Cate, on combined 15-of-24 shooting, with 10 points off the bench from junior forward Terre Tracy, Montana rebounded with an 88-45 dismantling of TCU to go into the Christmas break with a record of 7-2.

It would be the second of three consecutive seasons that Montana lost a pre-holiday game and then wouldn't lose again until the NCAA tournament in March.

After the break: an 82-69 home win over Washington State, with Cate going for 30 on just 14 shots, followed a day later with a 76-60 win over Portland State, then a nonconference opponent, with McNulty going for 30 of her own on 50 percent shooting.

That would send Montana into its Big Sky Conference schedule. The Lady Griz rolled through the league the year before, going 16-0, then adding two more wins in the conference tournament.

That scenario would repeat itself not only in 1989-90 but again the next season: 16-0, with two more tournament wins to advance to the NCAAs.

Over a stretch that included three full seasons and parts of two more, Montana would win 67 consecutive games against league opponents.

But it wasn't always easy, not with that sizeable target for every other team to take aim at.

Example: Nevada would finish last in the Big Sky that season, going 2-14, 6-21 overall. But when Montana came to town in mid-January, the Wolf Pack was ready (if not its fans. Only 209 showed up.)

Nevada shot 44.4 percent in the first half and led 32-30 at the break.

McNulty wasn't having it. She poured in 35 points, then the single-game scoring record for Montana as the Lady Griz rallied to win comfortably, 73-53.

And here we pause to remember this: McNulty scored 29 points as a freshman. Not in a game. For the entire season.

"In high school I was a post, and I kept begging to learn the wing. I never got the opportunity, so I showed up at Montana and had no skill. I could shoot it inside, but I had no passing, no dribbling, nothing. I couldn't compete," she says.

"My freshman season was really hard to swallow. You come in as a high school star and you sit on the bench and barely see the floor. It's tough for anybody."

She was one of dozens of players over the years who had to go through the same process, a similar adjustment, from big-fish-small-pond to small-fish-big-pond, though hers was maybe even more radical, given her change of position. She had to learn a whole new skill set.

"I had to grow a ton," she says. "But just being in practice and being surrounded by the quality of players you're practicing with every day, you learn.

"As long as you're willing to learn and listen to the coaches about what you need to work on and put the time in, that's all it was. Time and development and getting stronger and smarter."

She was a revelation as a sophomore in 1986-87, averaging 9.1 points to rank third on the team in scoring. After sitting out Montana's 28-2 season with a shoulder injury, she averaged 13.7 points on 52.9 percent shooting in 1988-89, second behind McLeod's 14.3.

A number of things came together to create McNulty, the scorer. She grew up playing with her back to the basket and she took that mentality with her to the perimeter.

And she was one of the best all-around athletes in program history. Later that spring, she would re-join the track and field program. She already shared the school record in the high jump of 5-8, set a previous spring. (Note: Even today, it's only two inches up from that, at 5-10.)

The rotation for the Big Sky outdoor championships just happened to fall on Missoula in 1990, and McNulty took advantage of the home-field advantage. She won the javelin and finished second in the heptathlon.

Roll that all together and put it on the court and you get a singular talent.

"It was a different-looking shot. Not unorthodox, but she had the ability to shoot over anyone," says Selvig. "Nobody could really change her shot. Getting it to her in a position where she could score it was the key.

"A lot of kids over my years developed the ability to shoot over people by shooting a jump hook. Jean did not need that. She faded a little and had great extension, and she got off the floor."

"It was going to kill him my freshman year," adds McNulty. "He was like, 'What is that? Stop that.' Then he quit talking about it.

"I can't put my finger on where it developed. No one ever taught me it. In the post, you play with your back to the basket, so I figured wherever I am on the floor, I can have my back to the basket on the wing and do it. It just worked. I don't know."

Some works of art are best left unexplained, just enjoyed.

McNulty scored in double figures in every game she played that season and had 26 at Montana State on 13-of-23 shooting as Montana won 72-55 in MSU's first season under new coach Judy Spoelstra.

Gone was Gary Schwartz, in was Spoelstra, last seen by Lady Griz fans scoring 23 points for Oregon State in a 72-65 Beavers victory over Montana in Corvallis near the end of the 1981-82 season.

Montana's next game was at Boise State, which was under first-year coach June Daugherty, who was in the early stages of building a program that would challenge the Lady Griz sooner rather than later.

Part of her plan -- she had been an assistant coach on the Stanford team that played in front of more than 8,700 fans in the 1988 NCAA tournament game in Missoula -- was to create the same environment.

Relative to the rest of the Big Sky, she was off to a good start. Boise's game against Montana drew 1,750, the largest crowd the Lady Griz would face on the road that season.

The pregame hoopla wasn't realized once the game tipped off. Montana held Boise State to 27.1 percent shooting. The Lady Griz led 44-23 at the half and won 79-42.

"They were so hyped for the game," said McNulty afterwards. "They believed they could beat us, so to come out and play so well was awesome.

After Montana pulled out a 61-57 home win over Idaho State in late January, no Big Sky team would get closer than 10 to the Lady Griz the rest of the regular season.

Montana defeated Montana State at home, 66-55, in early March to wrap up its fifth perfect record in league in nine seasons. The Lady Griz would host the tournament for the seventh time in eight years.

It was a scene that was beyond daunting to the rest of the league by that time.

"When you look at Montana at home, it's not a normal situation of facing the conference champion," said Eastern Washington coach Bill Smithpeters before his team faced Montana in the semifinals.

"It's not the normal 10-point difference for the home-court advantage. They've got at least 20 to work with."

So Smithpeters likely felt good about his team losing just 72-61, but the Eagles could not stop Cate, who scored 32 points on 13-of-15 shooting, at the time the most points scored by a Lady Griz in a home game in program history.

Idaho put up 50 in the second half in the other semifinal to defeat Boise State 91-72, but Montana held that offense in check the next night.

The Vandals turned the ball over just eight times but were held to 33.9 percent shooting. Montana, now 27-2 and on a 21-game winning streak, won 64-49 to clinch trip No. 6 to the NCAA tournament.

"We did a better job defensively than I thought we could have that year. That was a strong point," says Selvig.

"I thought we'd have a good team but I didn't know how good we'd be when we lost Vicki. The girls did a heck of a job to end up with the season they did."

The team met at Selvig's home the next afternoon to watch the NCAA tournament selection show. When it popped up that Montana was the No. 8 seed in the West Regional and would host No. 9 Hawaii, for most it was a novelty. The Lady Griz had never faced the Rainbow Wahine. How exotic!

For Selvig, it was a head-scratcher. Hawaii, a No. 9 seed? Uh oh.

For one player it was a case of worlds colliding.

As a senior at Billings Central in 1988, Cate was taking her time choosing a college for which to play basketball. She'd made visits to Kentucky, New Mexico, Montana.

That spring she reached out to Hawaii coach Vince Goo.

"She called us and said she was interested. I knew of her but had never seen her play, so I went through our (recruiting) notes," Goo said this week. "Whoo, this is a top kid, one of the top in the country, so we were pretty excited.

"We brought her in for a visit. I think she was ready to commit. Robin told me he thought he had her in the bag, because he gets everybody from Montana that he wants. So he had to go take another visit, but we almost got her. She would have been a huge asset for us."

Even without Cate, Goo's team was enjoying a breakthrough season. The Rainbow Wahine had made their first NCAA tournament the year before, falling in their opening game to Washington.

Hawaii had lost just two games during the regular season in 1989-90, both at UNLV in Big West contests on back-to-back days, such as the schedule was set up in those days to cut down on travel.

UNLV would go 28-3 that season and end the regular season ranked No. 5 nationally but get a No. 4 seed in the West Regional, meaning the selection committee viewed the Rebels not No. 5 but among the 13 to 16 best teams in the country, another slight to the Big West.

"Doggone, there must be a lot of good teams out there the voters don't know about," Goo said after seeing the brackets.

His team lost to Pacific in the Big West tournament but its resume listed two wins over Long Beach State and another over Virginia, which would make it to the Final Four.

"We thought at worst we'd be playing at home and at best we'd get a first-round bye. We're 25-3. It hurts," he said.

His team closed the regular season with a home sweep of then No. 14 Long Beach State to move up to No. 12 in the AP poll. It dropped to No. 16 after falling to Pacific.

Hawaii remained in Southern California after losing in the Big West tournament. The hope was it would get to return to the Islands after the selection show revealed a home game.

Instead it showed Hawaii going not west but north to Missoula, where Selvig was not exactly pleased either.

"I thought they had a chance to get one of the (first-round) byes," he said that week. "It's a tough draw. But there's no such thing as an easy game at this point. We're just happy to be playing at home."

As Austin noted about her time at Long Beach State, the Big West, even the best teams, did not draw well, at least compared to Montana.

In 28 games that season, home and road, Hawaii had played just four that drew even 1,000 fans. The most: 1,667. Montana was expecting something approaching a sellout.

And it was Montana. "Fifty (degrees), 30, it doesn't matter. Anything below 65 is cold to us, but from what I understand, the game's indoors," said Goo, who was one of the best in the business at off-the-cuff one-liners.

"We don't get snow on the road, but we'll keep our shooters out of the snow, keep their hands warm."

He was in a story-telling mood this week, like the one about the older Lady Griz fan he ran across in a Missoula grocery store the day before the game when he was out getting snacks for his team.

"Oh, you're here for the game, aren't you?" he says he was asked. "I guess she was a booster. She said, 'Good luck, but not too much.' Then she turned and walked away."

And the one about his team's three redshirting freshmen, who did not travel with the team to the Big West tournament. But Goo wanted them in Missoula to experience the NCAA tournament.

"They got off the plane and called us and said, 'Where are you? No one is here to pick us up at the airport.' They were in the wrong city," he says. "The flight attendant had told them that this is where you get off, so they got off. Freshmen, right?

"I forget where they were, but they were in Montana. I told them we'd send three horses to pick them up."

And then there was the team hotel -- he thinks it was the Holiday Inn -- the one with the marquee on a pole out front that read Go Grizzlies, Best Wahine.

"We got up the next day and it was, Beat Grizzlies, Go Wahine," he says. "It was maybe 10, 12 feet and the pole was icy all the way up.

"At our team meeting that morning, I said, Okay, somebody climbed up there in the middle of the night. I'm not asking who it was. Just know it's dangerous because it's frozen and slippery. But if you can do that, whoever you are, you should be our leading rebounder tonight."

For as much as Goo liked making jokes, his team was seriously good, highlighted by 6-foot-1 Judy Mosley, who was averaging 25.9 points and 14.4 rebounds entering the game, a player Selvig said at the time would be one of the best visiting players the Lady Griz had ever faced.

Goo knew Montana was good and scary good at home. Indeed, the Lady Griz had won 125 of their previous 129 games in their home gym. Three of those losses had come by two, three and two points.

The only other loss had been the season opener against Washington.

"Judy was 6-1, (Kaiei) Namohala was 6-1, then we had a bunch of guards, so we weren't really tall," Goo says.

"We knew their home record and what they had been doing. You go up there and it's pretty intimidating. Not the fans, they were really good sports, just the noise."

His plan: get to the line, early and often. Slow it down. Don't allow Montana to gain any momentum, the kind a crowd of 8,407 could rally behind.

"We wanted to work the ball inside and look to go to the foul line. We wanted to shoot more free throws than Montana, which would be difficult to do," he says. "We wanted to get after it and attack."

McNulty and Cate both had 13 points in the first half and Montana led 39-35 at the break.

The first six minutes of the second half? That was usually Lady Griz time, when they took a four-point lead and the energy from an excited crowd and buried their opponent for another going-away win in Missoula.

This time the opponent flipped the script. Behind the shooting of guard Ayesho Brooks, who scored 17 of her team-high 24 points in the second half, the Rainbow Wahine scored the first seven points of the second half to take a lead they would never give back.

It was 12-2 to start the second half, then 22-6. The lead reached 12, then 15.

Every time Montana pushed back, Hawaii -- usually Brooks, who took all six of her team's 3-pointers, hitting four -- had an answer that few teams who ever visited Missoula had.

"A lot of teams came in here and when the crowd got going in the second half, they would get rattled and we could put some real good runs together," says Selvig. "You could feel it. Okay, here comes that run. We're going to put them away. They quieted the crowd every time.

"It wasn't like we folded and gave them that game. They really responded in a very tough environment. What really stands out is how they earned it. They responded every time they needed to. They didn't let us make that run we needed to make."

Hawaii got it done the same way Eastern Washington had come back from down 14 at the half to win the Mountain West tournament title in 1987. The Rainbow Wahine went 17 for 29 in the second half.

Some intentional fouling at the end to extend the game skewed the numbers a bit, but Hawaii got to the line 30 times to Montana's 20. Coupled with 19 offensive rebounds and just 13 turnovers, it was the recipe for a huge road win.

"Our kids played hard," Goo says. "We wanted to win it from the free throw line, have them foul us more than we fouled them and kind of control the boards.

"Our kids came out the second half and played well. The pressure starts to shift to the home team in that situation, especially with the kind of record they had. We can't be losing this, that kind of thinking."

McNulty would end her career going for 30 points on 12-of-23 shooting. She made 15 3-pointers that season. Two of them came in the game's final 95 seconds.

"That wasn't my game. That was sheer want, sheer will," she says of her perimeter shooting that night. "I remember giving it everything and then complete devastation when it was over.

"I remember every play from that game like it was yesterday. That little guard, I can still see her draining threes. It was the worst feeling in the world when it was over, but they flat-out beat us."

Hawaii would extend its lengthy road trip and head back to California to face Stanford, the No. 1 seed in the West, a team that had received one of the region's four byes.

The Cardinal was rested, veteran and on its way to the program's first national championship. Stanford defeated Hawaii 106-76.

"They were good but they weren't much better than Montana," says Goo. "We'd been gone a while by that time and they were pretty tough at their place.

"They played well. They got it going at the beginning of the game and we couldn't keep up with them. They were a good ball club."

*****

Cheri Bratt was a freshman on Montana's 1980-81 team, the first season of the decade that has now been covered, quite well we believe, by the Lady Griz Rewind series.

She was on the first Montana team to make an NCAA tournament appearance, on the first Lady Griz team to host and win an NCAA tournament game, at home over Oregon State in 1984 that brought out a then-record 4,000 fans.

Seems quaint now. Back then it was a program-altering afternoon.

She played in Germany in 1985, then spent 1986 in Little Rock, Ark., for an internship as part of her schooling to become a dietician.

When she finally returned to Missoula, where she still lives, she found a Lady Griz program that had taken off, from where it had been when she left to heights none of those players from the first part of the decade would have believed.

Nine thousand for a women's basketball game?

"All the girls were now very good, so there was skill around them. They played faster, they played stronger, and they played really good teams," she says.

"And the fan support was phenomenal. They knew the Lady Griz put on a great show. The entertainment they provided Missoula was outstanding. To see that in six, seven, eight years and how it excelled, that was pretty phenomenal."

It's a family, they all say, no matter the era played. If so, no one would hold it against Bratt if she saw what her little sisters got to play with in the years after she left the program and felt a little envy.

"There was a little bit of jealousy. I was proud to have been a part of starting it, but then I was also, dang, why couldn't I have been a few years later and reaped the benefits and been able to play in front of a packed house and with so many great players around me?" she says.

"It was just fun to be a part of it, to be coached under Rob and see the program grow and see how it affected Missoula and the University. It was a great experience, probably the greatest choice I made in my life."

And there it is, the heart of the matter.

This was a project that began in mid-March, the goal to get 15 years of old box scores put into our electronic statistics program and made available for all to enjoy, 453 games worth, bridging four decades of Lady Griz basketball.

That's been accomplished.

It was supposed to be a numbers-based project, of points, rebounds, assists and halftime scores. Then it turned into something more, much more: a chance to bring those seasons back life, not through numbers but through memories crafted into words and stories.

That's a numbers game as well. We're nearing 40,000 words on the decade of the 80s.

But we could have saved ourselves 39,900 of those and a lot of time had we just talked to McNulty back in March, 30 years to the month that her Lady Griz career came to a close.

Bratt speaks for all of them when she says it was probably the greatest choice she made in her life.

And how many of them, even all these years later, have their minds drift back to those days, late at night, when memories both haunt and enchant us: the lights shine bright, the crowd is chanting, teammates are blood, the pride runs deep and Montana is rolling once again.

And there it is once more, the heart of the matter and this project: "What am I now, 53?" McNulty says. "And I still dream that I just got an extra year and I get to go play."

University of Montana Athletics

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