Lady Griz host 6-1 Lopes on Thursday

The Montana women's basketball team will look to snap a three-game losing streak when it hosts a rising Grand Canyon program on Thursday night.

The Lady Griz (2-5) and Antelopes (6-1) will tip off at 7 p.m. inside Dahlberg Arena.

Montana, which lost twice at Loyola Marymount's tournament and on Friday night at Washington State, has dropped three straight games for the first time under second-year coach Brian Holsinger and for the first time since the end of the 2020-21 season.

Grand Canyon will enter Thursday's game with just one loss, 80-72 at home against Arizona State last Wednesday, a game the Lopes led by 11 early in the fourth quarter.

Grand Canyon has played just one other game this season away from home, a 79-41 victory at Nicholls, a team ranked 350th in the nation out of 361 in the latest NCAA NET Rankings.

The Lopes' five NCAA Division I wins have come against teams with an average NET Ranking of 278. Their best win was a 73-60 home victory over North Dakota, a team Montana also defeated at home, 82-77.

Montana's six Division I opponents this season have a current average NET Ranking of 116.

Montana and Grand Canyon are meeting for just the third time, with the Lady Griz sweeping a home-and-home series in 2018-19 and 2019-20.

Montana will follow Thursday's game with a trip to Vermillion to face South Dakota on Sunday at 11 a.m. (MT). USD is coming off a 29-6 season that saw the Coyotes advance to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

The Lady Griz will host Montana Tech on Sunday evening, Dec. 18, then wrap up their nonconference schedule with a game at Gonzaga on Wednesday, Dec. 21. The Bulldogs are 7-2, with losses to Marquette and Stanford, and hold an NCAA Net Ranking of 20.

Coverage: Thursday's game will stream on ESPN+ and be available on KMPT 930 AM/99.7 FM or 930kmpt.com with Riley "Ace" Sauerwein calling the action.

At a glance (Montana): The Lady Griz suffered their second consecutive loss to a Pac-12 opponent on Friday when they fell at Washington State 77-57. Montana lost to California to close out Loyola Marymount's tournament.

The Lady Griz came out hot, shooting 10 for 16 in a high-scoring first quarter and 50 percent in the first half. Montana trailed 25-24 after 10 minutes, 40-37 at the break.

A Gina Marxen 3-pointer and Libby Stump pull-up jumper midway through the third quarter evened the score at 46-46, but the Cougars would close the period on a 12-0 run and make it 16-0 by scoring the first four points of the fourth quarter.

Montana went nearly nine minutes without a field goal after Stump's third-quarter jumper. Back-to-back 3-pointers by Washington State midway through the fourth turned a 12-point game into an insurmountable 68-50 advantage.

The Cougars, who improved to 6-1, outscored Montana 34-16 in the paint, turned a season-high 23 Lady Griz turnovers into 26 points and 14 offensive rebounds into 18 second-chance points.

In her second game of the season, Carmen Gfeller scored a season-high 17 points. She matched a career high with five 3-pointers on just six attempts and went 6 for 11 overall.

Keeli Burton-Oliver scored a season-high 13 points on 5-of-7 shooting, all her points coming in the first half. She has scored in double figures in four of the last five games, shooing 60.6 percent in those four games.

Montana went 9 for 14 from 3-point range against the Cougars. That .643 shooting percentage from the arc is the third best in program history in a game when the Lady Griz had nine or more makes.

(Montana went 16 for 24 [.667] against Idaho State in 2005-06, 11 for 17 [.647] against Sacramento State in 2004-05.)

Marxen dished out a season-high seven assists, Stump came off the bench to score nine points. Marxen ranks fourth in the Big Sky in assists (4.6/g), Stump is averaging 10.7 points on 52.0 percent shooting the last three games.

Montana shot 42.3 percent at Washington State, its best percentage away from home this season and its best since shooting 43.9 percent in a road win at Sacramento State last season.

At a glance (Grand Canyon): The Lopes were a Division II athletics program until the NCAA approved their move to Division I in 2017.

That move coincided with the hiring of then head coach Nicole Powell, who had an unremarkable three-year run of 38-46 before stepping down for the head job at UC Riverside.

That opening allowed Grand Canyon to make the splashy hire of current coach Molly Miller, who coached Drury, a Division II school in Springfield, Mo., to a six-year record of 180-17.

She was the NCAA Division II Coach of the Year her final two years at her alma mater. Her last two teams had a record of 67-1, with her final team, in 2019-20, sitting 32-0 when the national tournament got canceled because of the coronavirus.

Her first team at Grand Canyon, in 2020-21, went 18-7. Last year's team went 22-10, the most wins for the program since it won 23 games in 2012-13 at the Division II level.

The Lopes went 14-4 in the Western Athletic Conference last season, finishing second behind 17-1 Stephen F. Austin.

Grand Canyon was picked third in this year's preseason coaches' poll in the 13-team WAC, behind Stephen F. Austin and UT Arlington.

Sophomore guard Aaliyah Collins was voted to the eight-player first-team Preseason All-WAC team, junior guard-forward Tiarra Brown to the eight-player second team.

Grand Canyon opened the season 5-0 before falling 80-72 to Arizona State in front of program-record crowd of 6,019 at GCU Arena. The Sun Devils outscored the Antelopes 35-18 in the fourth quarter, 18-1 at the free throw line.

Grand Canyon bounced back with a 61-50 home win over Kansas City on Saturday, forcing the visitors into 27 turnovers, which is the Antelopes' MO. They are forcing an average of 26.7 per game this season, which ranks fourth nationally.

They rank second nationally in steals at more than 17 per game.

Led by Brown (11.3/g), Grand Canyon has four starters who average between 9.3 and 11.3 points per game. That quartet is shooting 52.6 percent.

Grand Canyon is shooting 46.7 percent while holding its opponents to 37.7. Montana is shooting 37.3 percent this season, its opponents 41.7.

If Grand Canyon has a notable weakness, it's at the free throw line, where the Lopes shoot 59.8 percent, which ranks 340th nationally. Something to watch for in a close game, which Thursday's is expected to be.

Series history: Montana and Grand Canyon have met twice previously, since the Lopes moved up to the ranks of Division I.

The Lady Griz won 69-47 at Grand Canyon in 2018-19, notable in that the victory came two days after that road trip opened with a 100-51 loss at Arizona.

All five starters finished in double figures as Montana shot 51.6 percent in the second half, 47.5 percent for the game.

Grand Canyon made a return trip to Missoula the next season and lost 72-67, with McKenzie Johnston going for 19 points on 8-of-14 shooting and five assists while playing all 40 minutes.

Montana shot 64.0 percent in the first half and never trailed. The Lady Griz built a 15-point third-quarter lead and held off the Lopes, who made it a one-possession game twice in the fourth quarter.

Both of those Grand Canyon teams were coached by Nicole Powell.

Around the Big Sky Conference:

* Sacramento State, which has two of the Big Sky's top six scorers in Kahlaijah Dean (18.3/g) and Isnelle Natabou (15.9/g), has won six straight games and sits atop the league at 6-1.

* The Hornets have a compelling matchup at 7-2 San Diego State on Wednesday, then will be favored in their final three games before Christmas, against CSU Bakersfield, CSU Northridge and Cal State Fullerton.

* Northern Colorado is 6-2 and coming off the best week of results by a Big Sky team this season. The Bears held off Colorado State in triple overtime and three days later knocked off South Dakota in Greeley, 72-65.

* Eastern Washington (4-2), Portland State (4-3) and Montana State (5-4) all have records better than .500. The Vikings already have three victories against Division I opponents – Seattle, Utah Valley and Fresno State – the same as they had all of last season.

* The top four teams in the standings – SAC, UNC, EWU, PSU – all are under second-year coaches, which is a healthy look for the league.

* Idaho State has won three of four to move to 4-4 on the season. Weber State also moved to 4-4 with a home win over Seattle on Saturday.

* Northern Arizona is 4-5 with losses to Arizona State, Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas State and Clemson.

* Idaho is 2-4 and still nine days away from playing its first home game of the season. Denver plays at Moscow on Dec. 15. That is Idaho's only nonconference home game.

Upcoming: Montana will play at South Dakota on Sunday, then have a week break for finals before hosting Montana Tech on Dec. 18.

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Players Mentioned

Keeli Burton-Oliver

Carmen Gfeller

Gina Marxen

Libby Stump

University of Montana Athletics