The Hall of Famers :: 1987-88 Lady Griz

Asking longtime Montana women's basketball coach Robin Selvig to name his favorite of the 38 Lady Griz teams he coached is as pointless as asking him to pick his favorite granddaughter.

"There is no way," he said last week, about selecting a team or choosing from among Sofia, Maya or Summer. They all have a special place in his heart.

But the 1987-88 Lady Griz team, the one being inducted on Nov. 7 into the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame, was certainly one of Selvig's most memorable.

Led by future Grizzly Sports Hall of Famers Marti Leibenguth and Lisa McLeod, Montana would go 28-2, a program record for wins in a season, its two losses coming by a total of four points.

The Lady Griz opened the season with 26 straight wins, the last unbeaten team in the country, lost by two at Montana State in the regular-season finale, won the Mountain West Athletic Conference tournament in Missoula, then hosted Stanford in the NCAA tournament and lost by two in overtime.

The season came on the heels of disappointment, Montana falling 77-74 to Eastern Washington in Missoula in the Mountain West championship game the year before, the Eagles storming back from a 42-28 halftime deficit.

How rare was the loss? The Lady Griz went 117-4 at home from the start of the 1981-82 season to the end of the 1988-89 season, the four losses coming by six, two, three and two points.

The following season, in 1987-88, Montana dominated from the start, doing it with two of the most talented players to ever wear a Lady Griz uniform sitting on the bench.

Vicki Austin, a transfer from then women's basketball power Long Beach State, was sitting out after switching programs. Jean McNulty, another future Grizzly Sports Hall of Famer, was sidelined the entire season after undergoing shoulder surgery in October.

Montana did just fine without them, opening 26-0 with no margin closer than eight points, rolling with a long-armed starting lineup of Leibenguth, McLeod, Dawn Silliker, Karyn Ridgeway and Cheryl Brandell, with Kris Moede moving into the starting lineup after Brandell was lost for the year to injury in February.

The Lady Griz were efficient offensively, shooting 47.6 percent and averaging 71.0 points, and a terror defensively, using a demoralizing 2-3 zone to lead the country in both scoring defense and field goal percentage defense.

Montana took its unbeaten record into March and traveled to Bozeman to end the regular season, the Bobcats winning 58-56 and Selvig, losing to the Bobcats for the first time in 24 games as coach of the Lady Griz, remembering the details to this day.

"Marti had a bit of foul trouble. There were some calls I didn't like," he said. "I can still remember the referee that made them.

"They had a good team but being undefeated was building up, building up. But I'd much rather be a streak-maker than a streak-breaker."

Montana eased through the conference tournament, winning by 19 and 26 points, to make its fourth of what would be 21 trips to the NCAA tournament under Selvig.

It will forever be remembered as The Stanford Game. Even though the Lady Griz and Cardinal have played four times in all, the 1988 NCAA tournament game stands alone for its importance in program history.

Playing in the Midwest Region and both getting byes in the 40-team field, No. 4-seeded Montana hosted No. 5-seeded Stanford in a second-round game on a Sunday afternoon in Missoula, with a crowd of 8,709 getting shoehorned into the arena.

"Everybody says they were at that game," said Selvig. "The atmosphere, probably the first time it was really like that. Just packed."

Led by Jennifer Azzi and other talented sophomores who would lead Stanford to the NCAA championship as seniors, the Cardinal squeaked out a 74-72 win in overtime.

The game was tied 34-34 at the half, deadlocked 70-70 at the end of regulation, as close as a game could get.

"It was a great game but heartbreaking," said Selvig. "Hell of a game to watch for the crowd. We had a shot on the rim to win it, a 3-pointer from Marti. I remember that.

"Tara had great respect for us and the fans we had. Back then, that's not what was happening. That helped get us into the national picture."

In the spring and summer of 2020, GoGriz.com ran a series entitled "Lady Griz Rewind," a deep dive into each of Montana's teams from the 1980s.

What follows is the entry for the 1987-88 season.

---------------

Even Tara VanDerveer's dad thought his daughter was making a mistake.

She had just led Ohio State to the Elite Eight at the 1985 NCAA women's basketball tournament, where the Buckeyes had fallen by four points in a regional final to eventual national champion Old Dominion.

In just five years at the school, following two at Idaho, which followed an interview at Montana, a job that went to Robin Selvig, she had Ohio State among the nation's elite.

And now she was packing her bags and heading where?

"My dad told me I was crazy to take (the Stanford job)," VanDerveer said last year, upon her election to the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame.

"He said, 'You'll be unemployed and coming home to live with us in three months.'"

Sometimes father doesn't know best.

Next season will be VanDerveer's 36th at the school. She has a career record of 1,094-253 and with five more wins will pass Pat Summitt as the winningest coach in women's basketball history.

She's led the Cardinal to two national championships and taken them to a dozen Final Fours.

But back in the spring of 1985, the Cardinal were coming off a nine-win season, with a 2-12 record against the USC's and UCLA's of the world in the old Western Collegiate Athletic Association.

The year before: 5-23, 1-13 in the WCAA. It wasn't a place aspiring coaches were lining up to go.

It was a school that put academics first, and the girls who met those standards rarely brought to The Farm basketball skills that could have Stanford competing against the better teams in the country.

At least that was the belief at the time. VanDerveer saw it differently.

"People were definitely scratching their heads," she said Friday morning while walking her dogs in the woods near her cabin in Minnesota.

She was due for a break. She recently finalized the hiring of two new assistant coaches.

"I really felt like there should be a place that combines academics and basketball. That's what I thought we could do there. It would be the ultimate challenge, in academics and basketball."

In 1987, in her second year at Stanford, she said, "We have too much going for us for it not to work."

But there is another side to the story. VanDerveer, who owns a home just off campus, saw it as a place she wanted to live, which is an often-overlooked piece of a coach's journey through the profession.

Some coaches make it a priority. For others, the location of the school is secondary to the opportunity the school provides to move up the ladder. It's a mere stopover on the way to bigger and better things.

"I want the best of both worlds for myself," she said in the 1987 interview, meaning a place she could win and make a difference in the lives of young women while loving where she lives.

On Friday she added, "I don't think there could have been a better fit for me than what I found at Stanford, so I understand Robin. Missoula is a beautiful place."

It's part of the Selvig legacy, that he never gave other suitors a chance to win him over, to woo him to another job, not even Jud Heathcote.

"It was perfect for me. I never really considered looking to go anywhere else," he says. "It was a great place to raise a family. There was great support and new challenges every year, and we were able to get great young ladies here.

"Tara was a great fit for where she ended up, and it worked out really well for her. That's as good a program as there has been for the length of time it's been good."

Call it a shared worldview, two coaches believing that you can build a championship program in a place you'd want to live even if basketball was taken away. As VanDerveer said, the best of both worlds.

But on that Sunday afternoon in mid-March in 1988 in Missoula, in Selvig's 10th year at Montana, VanDerveer's third at Stanford, neither one was thinking about that.

He was on one bench, coaching a team that was 28-1, she on the other, her team 26-4. One of their teams would see their dream season come to an end before sunset.

It would require overtime. And nearly 9,000 would be witnesses.

---------------

The story of the 1987-88 Lady Griz can't be told without recalling how the previous season had ended, how Montana had let a 14-point halftime lead slip away in a 77-74 loss to Eastern Washington in the championship game of the Mountain West Conference championship game.

"Sometimes when the train gets rolling, it's very difficult to stop it, and that's what happened that day," says Harley Lewis, Montana's Director of Athletics at the time.

"The girls did the best they could, Robin did the best he could, they just couldn't stop what was happening on the other side of the arena. Those things happen in athletics."

The win sent the Eagles to the NCAA tournament, the Lady Griz to Amarillo, Texas, for the National Women's Invitational Tournament, a national event but still a secondary prize.

"It hurt us a little bit. And it lingered for a while. It was an unspoken thing, but it was definitely under our skin. We wanted to get back to the NCAAs the next year," says Marti Leibenguth, who would be a senior in 1987-88.

She was one of three returning starters, along with senior forward Dawn Silliker and junior center Lisa McLeod, who was coming off an all-region sophomore campaign.

The backcourt got a big boost with the return of junior Cheryl Brandell, a six-foot guard who averaged 9.7 points and 4.7 rebounds as a sophomore in 1985-86 before missing the following season for personal reasons.

"It was great to see her doing well, and it was great for us, because she was a really good player," says Selvig, who went out of character when he went on record before the season began.

"I look at our team and think we'll be good, maybe real good," he said. "If we play every game the best we can, we can win every game."

How close that would come to proving true. Even so, more than 30 years later Selvig isn't sure why he would have said that for public consumption.

"That does sound out of character, but I did feel like we were going to have a really good year. We had a good team coming back. I was maybe alluding to our preseason notebook that said we need to approach every game with the idea that we're capable of winning it if we play our absolute best," he says.

"I always talked that we need to go on the floor every day with the idea that we can win. I just felt it was important to have the mindset that it's possible we win."

It was a team that had scoring at every position -- Montana would average 71 points on 47.6 percent shooting, the best single-season percentage in program history -- but it was on the defensive end where the Lady Griz were most overwhelming.

Leibenguth was 6-foot-2, McLeod 6-foot-1, Silliker, Brandell and senior guard Karyn Ridgeway all six-foot. That size had a devastating effect on opponents, who averaged 53.7 points that season on 35.1 percent shooting.

After the regular season, Montana was leading the nation in both scoring defense and field goal percentage defense.

"Our zone was big. We didn't have a 6-5 girl but we had overall size," Selvig says. "Our guards were long, our inside kids were athletic and long. In general we started over six foot at every position.

"We put a good zone on the floor. It was tough for people to pass around."

In two games against Montana that season, Nevada, in its first year as a league opponent, went 37 for 112 (.330) and in neither game -- 67-44 and 66-48 losses -- broke 50 points.

"We just don't have the tools we need to win a game like this," said then Nevada coach Anne Hope after one of her team's games against the Lady Griz.

"They're big, physical and well-disciplined. Their defense is tough to get over because they're so big."

It would also be Selvig's most experienced and most veteran team in his first decade leading the Lady Griz.

Upperclassmen would get every start that season and they were good. Only one underclassman, redshirt freshman Marti Kinzler, would average more than nine minutes per game.

It was the start of The Lady Griz Way: redshirt as a freshman, gain some experience the next two years as an underclassman, then become the next group of championship upperclassmen.

The 1992-93 Big Sky Conference MVP, Ann Lake? She redshirted as a freshman, as did subsequent MVPs Greta Koss (1995-96), Skyla Sisco (1997-98) and Linda Weyler (1999-2000).

It was a luxury and a process other programs in the league could not match.

"For a number of years we had juniors and seniors who were all-conference players, so we were able to give a lot of the freshmen the opportunity to redshirt," says Selvig.

"It was always their decision, but I was able to give them the opportunity. There were not too many freshmen coming in and replacing all-conference juniors and seniors."

Montana opened the season with an easy win over Eastern Montana, with Leibenguth starting the year in midseason form: 21 points on 9-of-12 shooting.

(More than three decades later she still owns the best career shooting percentage in program history: .529.)

The Lady Griz then won their Domino's Pizza Classic with wins over Lamar and Oregon, the latter the first win over the Ducks in eight tries. In two games Leibenguth went 15 for 24 and grabbed 19 rebounds.

After a two-win trip to California, with victories over UC Irvine and U.S. International, Montana wrapped up its pre-Christmas schedule with home wins over Washington State and Creighton.

The 84-76 win over the Bluejays righted a 70-47 loss to Creighton on the road the season before.

While that win was rewarding, the season's first test would come three days after Christmas, when No. 14 Washington came to town.

Montana was 7-0, Washington, favored to win the Pac-10, was 6-1, the Huskies' only loss to that point to Louisiana Tech, the team that would go on to win the national championship.

There was also the underlying storyline of Karen Deden, who had two older sisters, Linda and Doris, who had played for the Lady Griz. She was a freshman starter for Washington.

"We had obviously hoped to get her, but she was highly recruited," says Selvig. "She was looking to go and Washington had a good program. She did well while she was there."

Indeed. She would score 1,596 points, a total exceeded by only three players -- Shannon Cate, Mandy Morales and Hollie Tyler -- in Lady Griz history.

Deden would go 1 for 8 and foul out in her return to Missoula that December night, but she wasn't the only starter who struggled. Lisa Oriard was 0 for 9, Tracy Thirdgill 1 for 10.

Washington scored two points in the game's opening seven minutes and started 4 for 24. Montana led 35-19 at the half and rolled to a 78-57 win, its third over a ranked opponent in program history.

The result, the 5,254 fans in attendance who loved what they were seeing and what she thought was a discrepancy in the officiating only added to Washington coach Chris Gobrecht's frustrations.

She was issued two technical fouls and aired her no-filtered thoughts after the game.

"Montana is a very good team, but they carry a rap, and nobody will come here to play (because of it)," she said, suggesting one-sided officiating in Missoula. "We're one of the few teams that will."

After told of Gobrecht's thoughts, Selvig said after the game, "It's very irritating. They never, ever can give credit. Anybody watching the game who thought we weren't the better team tonight wasn't watching the game."

Time hasn't softened Selvig's view on the outcome or how it came to be. "I would stand by my comments," he said this week. "All I can say is, the game's on tape."

Leibenguth became the sixth player in program history to reach 1,000 career points in a home win over Wyoming, then Montana improved to 11-0 with a 62-54 road win at Utah.

The win over the Utes led to a first: Montana cracked the AP top 20 poll for the first time at No. 19. The Lady Griz would reach as high as No. 14 by late February.

When Mountain West Conference play began, the belief was that it was Montana and everybody else, with a gulf in between.

The national publication Women's Basketball Yearbook listed Montana as the favorite. For top contenders it was quite frank: none. For other contenders it listed Montana State, which had tied for third the year before behind Montana and Eastern Washington.

Montana won its first seven league games by an average of more than 22 points per game. Those included a feel-good home victory over Eastern Washington and a 75-31 drubbing of Idaho, a team that just three years earlier had gone 28-2 and three times defeated the Lady Griz.

Across the divide, Montana State was undergoing a resurgence under third-year coach Gary Schwartz. The Bobcats had won 16 games the year before to match the program record for wins in a season, but nobody outside of Bozeman was expecting what was taking place in 1987-88.

"We had some pieces in place my junior year," says Lynne Andrew, a senior on that team and now an associate director for women's basketball at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis.

"The players he brought in my senior year gave us that extra depth and made us feel like a really, really strong unit. He did a good job of getting the pieces he knew we needed."

There were good wins -- 73-57 over Creighton -- and some tight escapes -- 74-72 over Eastern Washington, 71-69 at Idaho State -- and they had the Bobcats sitting 17-0 in early February.

"(Coach Schwartz) was really good at getting to know us personally," says Andrew, when asked to explain her coach's methods for bringing out the best in his players and team.

"He had a way of making us all feel like we were a family. There was no favoritism. He supported all of us and made us feel like we all contributed, no matter how many minutes you played or how many points you scored. You wanted to play as hard as you could for the team."

It was just about the ideal scenario: Montana was 18-0, Montana State was 17-0, and they were set to play in Missoula on Feb. 6. Iowa and Louisiana Tech were the only two other unbeatens in the nation at the time.

But there was one more element to the meeting of undefeated teams and in-state rivals that made it the perfect storm.

Prior to the 1985-86 season, Lewis's associate AD, Barbara Hollmann, had come to him with an idea, of establishing a new attendance record for a women's basketball game played west of the Rockies.

"It wasn't a new idea," Lewis says. "Texas had done a major promotion to set a national record. Barbara read about it and came in and said, Why don't we try to do this and set a record?"

Montana achieved it by bringing in a crowd of 6,112 for a win over Eastern Washington in 1985-86 that took the record away from USC.

Before the 1987-88 season, they had picked the Montana State game to try it again.

"I went out and beat the bushes a little bit to get the Missoula community involved. Instead of selling a bunch of tickets at the gate, we decided to get a bunch of corporate sponsors and give them the value of a $2 ticket," says Lewis.

"If someone came in and gave us $500, we gave them 250 tickets to give away. As a result of that, we got all the businesses in Missoula behind the event."

What it did was bring in hundreds and hundreds of fans who may not have otherwise gone to a Lady Griz game. It expanded the program's reach, and the effect has been lasting.

When that game on a Saturday night tipped off, there was a new record: 9,258.

"We were on the court warming up when they opened the doors, and it was like opening the floodgates," says Andrew. "People were literally running across the court, right through us as we were warming up, so they could get their seats.

"It was my first experience with a crowd that big. They started early, and they were into it. Some of my teammates were in awe of the atmosphere that game had, but I kind of fed off it."

The box score backs it up. Andrew, who would score a Montana State single-season record 645 points in 1987-88, totaled 20 points on 9-of-15 shooting. Her teammates were just 11 for 40.

Still, Montana led just 28-24 at the half, and it was a one-point game with five minutes to go before the Lady Griz pulled away for a 67-59 victory.

"I was pleased with the way it came out," Schwartz said after the game. "I wasn't pleased we lost, but it was a tremendous crowd, a tremendous game. It was really great for women's basketball."

Leibenguth had 15 points and 14 rebounds, and the Lady Griz shot 50.9 percent. "Talk about fun," she says. "That was an incredible atmosphere, an incredible game."

Selvig -- who said afterwards, "No one could hear anyone else. I've got a headache and sore throat I can't believe" -- and Lewis both point to that game as being the impetus behind the support Montana would get in the following years and decades.

Montana had its die-hard fans and a steadily increasing number of them. In one game, the Lady Griz had become an even larger attraction.

"Obviously there were people there who hadn't been to a lot of women's basketball games," says Selvig. "You get all that together and everyone goes away happy, it helps build. People want to come back."

"That promotion was probably the one thing that really put women's basketball to the point where it became something people wanted to come watch," says Lewis.

"We brought in a whole bunch of people who would not normally be there, and it was a wild environment. Once you expand the reach and those people have fun, there are a lot of spinoffs, from season tickets to corporate support."

The victory gave Selvig a 23-0 record in his career against Montana State.

"Montana's a tremendous team. I don't know if we're good enough to beat them," Schwartz said after the game.

Some of it was probably his true feelings. Some of it was likely coach-speak. What mattered most was what Andrew and her teammates had taken away from the game.

With everything against them, the Bobcats had played well.

"It was a competitive game, very physical," she says. "We didn't back down. It was a battle the entire way. We couldn't wait to get them on our court."

They would have to wait 28 days, and they would get the nation's last unbeaten team on their home court.

Louisiana Tech lost 66-62 to Penn State at home on Feb. 12. Iowa lost 58-54 at Ohio State, VanDerveer's former team, on Feb. 26. The Lady Griz were the last team with a -0 at the end of their record.

But all was not perfect in Missoula. Brandell, who was averaging 11.1 points on 52.8 percent shooting, 4.4 assists and 3.5 rebounds at the time, suffered a knee injury in practice three days after Montana defeated Montana State in Missoula.

Brandell had missed her senior year at Olympia High with a knee injury, but this one did not seem to be major. Maybe she'd miss a few games, perhaps a few weekends. Certainly she'd be back to full health by the postseason.

She sat out Montana's home wins over Nevada and Northern Arizona, then came off the bench at Idaho midway through the first half. Her season was over before she had played two minutes.

"It's bad news," Selvig would say after everything had been diagnosed. "We don't have anyone that plays exactly like Cheryl."

She would be replaced in the starting lineup the rest of the season by senior Kris Moede. Karyn Ridgeway, more used to playing off the ball, would take over at point guard.

"We'd worked with her in that area trying to find minutes for her because she was a good player and we were so good inside," says Selvig.

"Obviously we would have liked to have Cheryl, but those things happen. We were deep enough that we were still real good."

In Montana's 76-49 win at Eastern Washington, Silliker reached 1,000 career points. In Montana's 72-55 home win over Idaho State, which upped its record to 26-0, Leibenguth became the program's career scoring leader, moving past Doris Deden.

Montana took a 26-0 record, a 42-game regular-season winning streak and a 23-0 record against the Bobcats under Selvig to Bozeman the first weekend of March as the two teams wrapped up the regular season.

Montana State was 23-2, two games behind Montana in the standings due to its surprising 83-79 loss at Idaho two weeks prior, and carrying a heavy load.

"It was no secret that the win streak favored Montana for a lot and lot of years," says Andrew. "You tried not to talk about it, but it was right there.

"You tried to set that aside and focus on the game plan that Gary set for us."

There was plenty of pressure on the other side as well, the weight of expectations. It wasn't the 26-0 record and finishing the regular season a perfect 27-0 that Leibenguth was concerned about as much as it was not becoming the first of Selvig's team to lose to Montana State.

"When I was a freshman, it was instilled in me that losing to the Cats is something you don't do," she says. "You don't lose to Bozeman."

The game brought a record crowd of 4,232 to Brick Breeden Fieldhouse.

"It was a chance to redeem ourselves," says Andrew. "The players were really, really hungry and really wanted that win.

"The coaches gave us the game plan and we had to execute, but there was this extra little fire in our hearts and bellies that helped make it happen."

Montana led 28-27 at the half, but after going 9 for 28 (.321) in the first half, Montana State went 12 for 20 (.600) in the second and rallied for a 58-56 victory, with Andrew and Leibenguth canceling each other out with 20 points apiece.

Andrew went just 6 for 15 from the field but 8 for 11 from the line. Her two free throws with six seconds left broke a 56-56 tie.

"I totally remember getting the ball in the lane and turning and getting fouled. I was like, Okay, this is it," Andrew said.

"I prided myself on my free throws. I was an undersized post player, so if I got fouled, I had to make them pay and finish the job and get the points at the free throw line. I stuck to my routine and knocked them both down."

It's funny how memories work, how moments at times of heightened senses can be recalled in exacting detail.

Andrew is from Brantford, Ontario, and her mom made it to one of her games each season, two spent at a junior college in Devils Lake, N.D., her final two at Montana State.

"My mom was at that game, and I saw her out of the corner of my eye before I shot the free throws. She was off to the corner of the baseline," Andrew says.

Trailing by two, Montana would get an eight-footer at the buzzer that could have tied it, but the shot rolled off the rim.

"I remember turning and jogging down the court thinking the game was over and seeing that gal put that last-second shot up. I didn't run back, so I was watching it from half court. I could see it in front of me. Everybody held their breath when that shot went up," Andrew says.

"That tops any victory I had in my career. We weren't just playing for ourselves and our team, we were playing for Montana State and our community. We celebrated to the extreme, like it was a national championship. You could turn and throw that monkey off your back in a sense."

"It was going to happen sometime," said Selvig. "They had good teams and were going to beat you sometime. It wasn't something that was going to go on forever.

Leibenguth says, "I definitely remember that game. It was tough. Losing that game was pretty devastating to us. They were a great team but, dang, it hurt."

Montana would host the Mountain West tournament the following weekend and get by Boise State 73-54 behind 23 points and 12 rebounds from Leibenguth and 17 points and nine boards from Silliker.

McLeod would reach 1,000 career points on the weekend, getting there in just 90 games played, the fastest of any of Montana's then 1,000-point scorers.

The other semifinal was going to produce a storyline for the title game no matter how it turned out. It was either going to be Eastern Washington, which had won the title the year before on Montana's home floor, or the final game of the season trilogy between Montana and Montana State.

The Eagles blew out of the Bobcats 81-65. Eastern Washington went 5 for 8 from 3-point range and outscored Montana State 26-9 at the free throw line.

"We did not do a whole lot, especially defensively," said Schwartz after the game. "Poor effort is the bottom line."

Six days after the high of knocking off Montana came the low of hopes not just going unfulfilled but of not even feeling like you'd given it your best shot.

"That was super disappointing. For some reason we let our guard down a little bit. It would have been sweet to have that third meeting with Montana, but unfortunately we fell short. We didn't get it done," says Andrew.

Montana State would get selected for the NWIT and lose games to New Orleans, Mississippi State and UNLV in Amarillo, Texas.

Montana would get Eastern Washington in the tournament championship game for the fourth time in five years and lead 41-29 at the half. The previous year it had been 42-28 at the half.

"It was a lot like déjà vu going into the locker room at halftime," Ridgeway said in the postgame press conference. "We did not want to repeat last year's loss to them."

Moede added, "Last year's game was in the back of everyone's mind."

The Eagles would go just 10 for 30 in the second half and Montana pulled away for a 79-53 victory behind 16 points from Leibenguth, the tournament MVP.

Montana was NCAA-bound for the fourth time.

As for its opponent ...

After going 13-15 in her first year at Stanford and 14-14 in Year 2, VanDerveer got it going in 1987-88 behind a recruiting class highlighted by Jennifer Azzi.

And behind the 3-point shot, which was in place for good for the first time in 1987-88, after it was used experimentally the season before.

Montana took 35 attempts from the arc through its first 29 games in 1987-88 and was 28-1 entering the NCAA tournament without it being an important part of its offense or really any part of what it was doing.

Stanford? The Cardinal had seen the light the summer before, on a trip to China to face some international opponents while playing under international rules. That included a 3-point line.

"One player we played against hit 10 threes in a game. I said, We're going to be a 3-point shooting team too," VanDerveer says.

"That was what gave us a chance to win. A lot of the teams we played against, like Old Dominion, Louisiana Tech, Tennessee, had big post players. Our way of beating them was to spread the floor and hit threes. We took to it right away."

Stanford hit 100 as a team in 1987-88, with Azzi going 70 for 162 (.432) all by herself. Montana wouldn't make its 100th 3-pointer as a program until the 1989-90 season.

Using a starting lineup of four underclassmen that would lead Stanford to a national championship in 1990, the Cardinal opened 14-0 before suffering its first defeat, 77-60 at Washington, the team Montana had handled in Missoula in late December.

Stanford would win its next 11 games and be 25-1 when it closed its regular season with back-to-back weekends of games against UCLA and USC, first in Los Angeles, then in Palo Alto.

The Cardinal would go 1-3 in those games and drop to a No. 5 seed in the 40-team NCAA tournament because of it. (Washington would make it as a No. 3 seed, USC a No. 4 seed.)

Montana, a No. 4 seed, and Stanford would both get placed in the Midwest Regional, with a Sunday afternoon game scheduled for Missoula.

Montana has faced the Cardinal four times in its history, but it only means one thing when Selvig says, "The Stanford game." That's how memorable it would turn out to be.

More than 2,000 tickets were accounted for before they even went on sale to the general public, between those purchased by season-ticket holders and members of the Grizzly Scholarship Association.

It was something Lewis was banking on, quite literally. He had to guarantee the NCAA a certain budget. If he hadn't been able to, the game likely would have been in Palo Alto, with the seeds flipped.

"You put an awful lot of pressure on the administrative and ticket-sales staff to sell enough tickets to meet the budget you'd proposed to the NCAA," he says.

"If we were going to have an empty arena, we would have probably had to go to Stanford to play."

The largest crowd VanDerveer's team had played in front of that season was 4,268 at Washington. Its best-attended home game? Washington's return, a 70-66 Stanford victory, brought in 3,254.

Montana would pack in 8,709 despite VanDerveer's tongue-in-cheek claim earlier in the week. "I don't think it will be that good of a game. I don't think people should come," she joked.

The game was tied 34-34 at the half and 63-63 with three minutes left when Stanford scored six straight points, all by free throw. The Cardinal led 69-63 with less than two minutes to go.

Stanford led 70-65 with 30 seconds left, and hope was flickering for Montana. But Leibenguth hit a 3-pointer (!) from the top of the key with 27 seconds left, and Sonja Henning missed the front end of a one-and-one with 16 seconds left, giving the Lady Griz the ball down two.

Leibenguth would draw a foul with five seconds left and hit both free throws to send the game into overtime.

"Obviously that was the last game of my career, so I remember it more than anything," says Leibenguth, playing spoiler as to the end result.

"An incredible atmosphere. Unbelievable. They were a super talented team. What an absolute battle. You couldn't hear anything. You couldn't ask for much more than that. It was an awesome way to go out."

The Cardinal scored the opening points of overtime and Montana never caught up. The Lady Griz went 0 for 4 from the free throw line in the extra session, two of those misses the front end of one-and-ones.

Ridgeway hit a 10-footer on the right side with 56 seconds left to make it 74-72, and that's how it ended.

Stanford would lose to No. 1-seeded Texas in the next round.

The following year, as a No. 2 seed, the Cardinal would lose 85-75 in a regional final to Louisiana Tech. In 1990, they would advance to the Final Four as a No. 1 seed and knock off Virginia and Auburn to win the national championship.

"What I remember about going to Montana is how the fans embraced women's basketball. They loved women's basketball. It was a great atmosphere," VanDerveer says.

"Winning that game was a great step for our program and that team. When you're building a program, it's taking baby steps. You've got to learn how to play on the road, how to play in front of crowds, how to play against more experienced teams. On that day our team was up for the challenge."

When the seniors on the 1987-88 team came in as freshmen in 1984-85, Montana had just set a new standard the season before by bringing in a crowd of 4,030 to face Oregon State in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

At the time it was a major stepping stone for the program.

They left having won a game their senior year in front of a crowd of 9,258 and bringing back more than 8,700 for a game against a team that was two years from winning a national championship, and taking that team to overtime.

"That game helped establish in everyone's mind that we had a program that had come a long ways," says Selvig.

"Obviously it hurt to lose it. One bounce here, one bounce there and you could win. But afterwards I didn't think about the loss but about how far we'd come. I was pretty proud of what the ladies had done."

And so he stayed, with never a thought of going anywhere else, living the best of both worlds.

University of Montana Athletics

Related Videos