Lady Griz announce annual award winners

Lady Griz junior Dani Bartsch was presented with one of the program's six annual awards on Thursday night at the team's postseason banquet.

Without knowing which one, you could make the case for any of them.

She was named to the Big Sky Conference All-Defensive Team, she set a program record for rebounds in a season, she played more minutes than anyone else, she became a 50-makes 3-point shooter after combining for 23 the previous two years, she earned second-team All-Big Sky honors.

She ranked first on the team in steals, second in blocks, third in assists. She defended, she improved, she was inspirational, she was valuable. In the end, she was just a Lady Griz doing Lady Griz things. That's why she was named the Theresa Rhoads Award winner for best representing Lady Griz basketball.

"She literally could have won any of the awards," said third-year coach Brian Holsinger. "Improved her shooting, made the All-Defensive Team, led the league in rebounding, inspirational with her toughness and effort all the time. Just a fighter. It's hard to argue her not being super valuable."

Want more? She has twice been named Academic All-District by College Sports Communicators and next month will be named Academic All-Big Sky for the third time, her 3.63 GPA as an accounting major making her a candidate for any academic award out there.

"We preach team first, academic excellence, character and integrity, and competitive greatness," said Holsinger. "Those are the four pillars of what we want to be. Those are four things that represent what the Lady Griz have been about for years.

"She is one of the best, if not the best, representatives of those four things in our program. Being a Montana kid who came in with potential and has turned that potential into reality is kind of who Dani is and what she means to this program."

Gina Marxen and Mack Konig shared the Mary Louise Pope Zimmerman Most Valuable Player award, MJ Bruno was named the Julie Deming Outstanding Defensive Player, Maggie Espenmiller-McGraw the Grace Geil Most Improved Player.

The Shannon Green Most Inspirational Player award, the one voted on solely by the players, went to Espenmiller-McGraw and Carmen Gfeller, while Gfeller collected the first-time Iron LG Award, given to the player who put in the best work in the weight room throughout the year.

Marxen and Konig shared the MVP award after sharing point guard duties last season. Both were double-digit scorers while combining to dish out 217 assists.

Their value can be defined as this: When Montana's point guards were at their best, whether it was scoring, distributing or just initiating the offense, the Lady Griz were at their best and difficult to slow down or contain.

Montana shot it better (.432) and scored it better (72.5/g) than any Lady Griz team since 2007-08, and the team's 357 3-pointers made were not only a program record by a mere 118, the total ranked fifth in Big Sky history.

"When we played well as a team, one of them or both of them were really clicking," said Holsinger. "We relied on them to make shots, to make good decisions and to start our offense."

Konig had a 24-point, seven-assist game when Montana traveled to Flagstaff and knocked off Northern Arizona. And when the Lady Griz were in a second-half battle at Idaho State in the regular-season finale, their third game in five days, Konig scored a career-high 26 points as Montana pulled out the win.

Marxen finished third nationally in assist-to-turnover ratio (3.05), had 21 games with 10 or more points and hit multiple 3-pointers in nine of Montana's last 11 games, finishing with 73 for the season, the third-most in program history.

"Mack had some gigantic games when she kind of put us on her back in certain moments, and there were games when Gina kind of took over," said Holsinger. "And then her decision-making and her ability to find people. She took care of the ball and consistently made the right plays for us.

"When those two were good, we were good and tended to win."

It's not often a fifth-year senior is voted most improved, but Espenmiller-McGraw's story is not the norm.

She scored 248 points (8.6/g) as a freshman at Iowa State in 2019-20, then 235 the next three seasons as injuries derailed the trajectory she was on. Last summer she moved to Montana and joined a new team for one final shot at being the Espenmiller-McGraw of old.

Once she got settled, she was one of the keys to Montana improving from 14 wins last season to 23 this year, the most for the program in a decade.

She ranked second behind Gfeller in scoring and hit a program-record 83 3-pointers, a total that came to be more by percentage than volume. Her season percentage of .435 from the arc ranked 10th nationally.

She scored nine or more points in 17 of Montana's final 18 games, including 20 against Boise State in a WNIT victory over Boise State as she evolved from 3-point shooter to all-around offensive threat.

"At the start of the season, she was just starting to get comfortable," said Holsinger. "As the season went on, she just got better and better and better. She came on at the end of the season and became a complete player for our team.

"She was one of the reasons we ended the season as well as we did, when she became the player we thought she could be. We wish she could be here longer because her best basketball was played at the end of the season."

When last season ended, Montana had allowed 69.0 points per game, the most in its history for a program that for decades was built on a strong defensive identity.

Holsinger addressed that need a year ago this month when he convinced MJ Bruno, formerly of Portland, to become a Lady Griz.

How much of a difference, really, can one player make? The numbers speak for themselves. Despite playing at a faster pace and in games with more possessions this season than last, Montana dropped its points allowed by more than five per game.

"One of the things we really missed last year was some intensity, some grit, some fire and the ability to change the game from an effort standpoint," said Holsinger. "She set the tone for our defense all year. Her intensity and her ability to really slow the ball caused havoc.

"If we wanted to stop a player or didn't want somebody to score, we wanted MJ on them. She got the toughest assignment almost every single time. If we wanted a stop, she was the person we'd pick."

Bruno also gave Montana a lift offensively, averaging 6.0 points and 4.9 rebounds. She shot 44.3 percent overall, 43.8 percent from the 3-point line.

She scored 12 points in her Lady Griz debut against Gonzaga, then in December had the game of her life, going 6 for 6 from the 3-point line, 8 for 8 overall, to score a season-high 23 points in Montana's comeback victory over UC San Diego.

But it was Montana's improved play on the defensive end this season that allowed the Lady Griz to go from 14 to 23 wins and do so comfortably. Sixteen of the team's 23 wins came by 11 or more points. Scoring more and allowing fewer has its advantages.

"She's everything we expected," said Holsinger. "She brought a level of fire and intensity. The best players always raise everyone's level of play and on defense she raised everyone's level. Overall, she was just so good on defense."

The Shannon Green Most Inspirational Player award was voted on solely by the players, with the team's coaches left to wonder how it was going to turn out. This year there were multiple players who received votes, which is a good sign.

But the most went to Espenmiller-McGraw and Gfeller, who claimed the highest number of votes and shared the award.

"We had a lot of people who got votes, which shows what this team is all about," said Holsinger. "The team spoke, and Maggie and Carmen came out tied."

Espenmiller-McGraw's inspiration comes from who she is as a person and a teammate paired with the toughness she showed while playing on lower legs that doctors years ago advised be reinforced with steel rods. She passed.

Despite season-long pain, she didn't miss a game all season and played more than 27 minutes per game. That will do for inspirational.

Gfeller's inspiration comes from her consistency, her equanimity, gifts that emerge from the experience gained from being a six-year Lady Griz and playing in a program-record 138 games and totaling 1,622 career points, fourth-most in program history.

Montana has been handing out the same awards now for nearly four decades. Given the importance of off-the-floor conditioning, something that is now a 12-month investment, Holsinger and his coaches decided to create a new way to recognize a standout in that area with the Iron LG Award.

It was picked by the person who spends more time with the players than anyone outside of the coaches, the person who sees them the next morning after wins and losses, who tries to get the most out of them on days when they might not necessarily be motivated to give it their all.

That's strength and conditioning coach Mitch Mussell. For the first winner of the Iron LG Award, he selected Gfeller.

"When we set out at the end of last season, Brian and I agreed we needed to change the culture of the team," said Mussell. "My mission was to do everything on my end to change it to a hard-working, fierce mentality. I also wanted the team to come up with their own goals and expectations.

"Carmen was the one who upheld those standards day in and day out. She always had a positive mentality and lived by what we decided were our goals and our expectations. She was the embodiment of what that looked like and why she deserves this award."

University of Montana Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Dani Bartsch

MJ Bruno

Maggie Espenmiller-McGraw

Carmen Gfeller

Mack Konig

Gina Marxen

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