Lady Griz ready for Maroon-Silver scrimmage

COVID note: Fans are asked to wear masks this season at home basketball games.

The last time Abby Anderson played a game inside Dahlberg Arena with fans, in the Before Times, she was in the starting lineup with McKenzie Johnston, Taylor Goligoski and Emma Stockholm, if that puts it in perspective.

Mike Petrino, who would be her head coach last season, when only a scattering of parents sitting in the upper bowl was all that was permitted in the facility, was still an assistant.

Montana outscored Sacramento State 52-24 in the second half that Saturday afternoon in front of a crowd of 3,112. And nothing has been the same since.

"That feels like a lifetime ago," Anderson said this week, as she and her teammates look excitedly toward Wednesday's Maroon-Silver scrimmage, which tips off at 5 p.m. "We're excited to feel the crowd again."

The crowd won't be what it will in late February when Montana hosts Montana State on a Saturday night or even next month when the Lady Griz host Gonzaga on a Sunday afternoon.

But it will be better than last season, when the team walked onto the court for its games in a facility that felt lifeless, in jarring contrast to the normal vibes and energy that are present even an hour before tipoff in Missoula.

Of course not all the players on this year's team know what was missing last season. Only five of the 13 players on this year's roster played a game inside Dahlberg prior to the pandemic: Anderson, Sammy Fatkin, Kylie Frohlich, Carmen Gfeller and Sophia Stiles.

Everyone else has only heard the stories, of the anticipation, of the thrumming, thumping undercurrent, of the fourth-quarter boost the crowd can give the home team in a close game, of the back-and-forth energy exchange between fans and players.

"Being an older girl, I'm excited for everyone to see what Dahlberg is like and how it feels to play in front of the most amazing fans in the Big Sky," said Anderson. "We tell them every day, it's so cool, it's so fun. You don't realize how loud it is until you play your first game there."

If there is the normal sense of excitement that surrounds the Maroon-Silver scrimmage, the annual kickoff to the season ahead, this year's brings with it a touch of curiosity for those returning fans.

The coaching staff, while somewhat familiar, is almost all new, and then there are those eight players most fans have never seen in person, including Willa Albrecht and Kyndall Keller, who were freshman last season, and Nyah Morris-Nelson, who was a junior after transferring from Iowa Western.

"I'm curious how everyone will respond to being in front of people again. I'm not sure myself how they'll respond," said first-year coach Brian Holsinger, who was the associate head coach at Oregon State last season, then hired at Montana in April.

"I know we'll learn a lot. I'm excited just to play in a different kind of environment, even though it's against ourselves, to see where we're at. It will be fun."

The returners need little introduction. Anderson and Gfeller were both voted third-team All-Big Sky Conference last year after stellar seasons.

Anderson averaged 12.4 points on 47.4 percent shooting and a team-leading 6.7 rebounds while blocking 51 shots, a total that ranked second in the league.

Gfeller led the team in scoring at 14.3 points on 52.9 percent shooting, which led the Big Sky and ranked 29th nationally.

And Stiles, as usual, did just about everything and did it well. She averaged 11.7 points and 5.8 rebounds while leading the team in assists, steals and minutes played.

Frohlich is a returning senior and part of the same class that welcomed the return of Sammy Fatkin back into the fold this past summer.

Fatkin played the back half of the 2018-19 season after transferring from Arizona, then the first half of the 2019-20 season before stepping away from basketball.

She returns with a sense of appreciation for the game, something given up now back in her hands.

"Her motivation and her confidence are high, and she's just really coachable," said Holsinger. "She's been one of our better players in practice. She's just done a really good job.

"I think there is a little bit of appreciation in everyone this season. Sammy is on the extreme end, but I think all the seniors and returners feel like this is new, so there is an excitement to that.

"They've been so coachable, so bought in. I think the fans will see a renewed energy in them and a renewed confidence. They've been very good for us."

Keller, the 2020 Gatorade Montana Player of the Year at Havre High, is one of the returners who has yet to play in front of a true Lady Griz crowd. Same with Albrecht.

Same with Morris-Nelson, who started her career at South Plains College in Texas before playing one season at Iowa Western.

She was recruited to Montana with the hook of playing in front of a fired-up fan base, one that loves its basketball. She'll finally get it as a senior.

"Nyah has really come along," said Holsinger. "She's very confident and does the right thing a lot. She executes our system really well over and over."

Montana's first-year upperclassman is junior Katerina Tsineke, who played her first two years at East Carolina.

She and Stiles will be the engines that make the Lady Griz go, at a (slightly) faster pace than you're used to.

"They've handled the ball mostly and are similar in a lot of ways," said Holsinger. "Both are very athletic players. They are really going to push the tempo and hopefully make good decisions. And both are very good defensively."

Of the four true freshmen, Dani Bartsch (Helena, Mont.) and Haley Huard (Highlands Ranch, Colo.) have had the gentler transition to the collegiate environment, if only for ease of relocation.

Both spent a good portion of their summers in Missoula working out with their teammates, and neither had to cross an ocean to get to their new home, as was the case for Lisa Kiefer (Marburg, Germany) and Lamprini Polymeni (Thessaloniki, Greece).

"It's been a big adjustment just because it's so different," said Holsinger of his European newcomers. "Both Lisa and (Lamprini) have showed flashes of really, really good play.

"Then they've had times where it's been, okay, this is a lot for them. Take a step back, remember what you're trying to do and focus on just getting better each day."

Huard and Bartsch had the benefit of those weeks in the summer, when things are more relaxed, before the urgency of the fall hits. Call it an extended freshman orientation.

"All four of them are coming along exactly how I would have thought," said Holsinger. "But having the summer makes a big difference. That's a big head start.

"Haley is coming along quickly. She's really improved in just the last week. Really improved. It's always an adjustment at the very beginning, the intensity, the speed, the detail. She's really taken a big step recently.

"Dani was hurt for a good week and a half, two weeks, so she's only practiced less than half of the practices, but she's done a good job of coming back and contributing in a lot of ways. She's going to have the chance to help us for sure. All the freshmen will have an opportunity to play at some point."

And let's not forget: They are all new at this, not to the sport but for the most part to each other, from the head coach down to the youngest of the freshmen. They are learning in real time, day by day, working from the ground up.

That puts them at a competitive disadvantage compared to teams like Idaho State, the Big Sky favorite, which has the benefit of picking up where the Bengals left off last season, with nearly an entire veteran roster intact.

But Montana doesn't have to beat Idaho State in October. The Lady Griz have four more months of prep work before March. The starting point will make the ascent just that much steeper and that much more fun to track from start to finish, however it ends up.

"It's so new for two reasons. The assistant coaches have never coached with me, so it's all new to them. And then the players as well, so we've simplified things. Let's work on our execution in whatever we do That's been the best approach just because there is so much new," said Holsinger.

"The team is coming along. We're nowhere near where we'll be, but I'm excited about them."

You can be too, on Wednesday night. Eight-minute quarters, of which there may be three, maybe four. It's going to be informal in its organization but not the play on the court.

"I expect our team to execute. We're always trying to execute, offensively, defensively," said Holsinger. "The more efficient you are, the more you execute, the better off you are.

"I think we'll play a little bit faster (than fans are used to). I think you'll see a disciplined style of play where we're not turning the ball over a ton, where we're getting good shots on a regular basis and also making our team take tough shots.

"I'm looking for how often we're in the right places, how often we're doing the right things, making the right decisions, if we're playing basketball well."

For the first time in a long time, you, too, can be the judge of that. In person once again.

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Players Mentioned

Willa Albrecht

Abby Anderson

Dani Bartsch

Sammy Fatkin

Kylie Frohlich

Carmen Gfeller

Haley Huard

Kyndall Keller

Lisa Kiefer

Nyah Morris-Nelson

Lamprini Polymeni

Sophia Stiles

Katerina Tsineke

University of Montana Athletics