Lady Griz seeking second straight win

The Montana women's basketball team will wrap up this year's edition of the Big Sky Conference-Summit League Challenge when it hosts St. Thomas on Saturday night at Dahlberg Arena.

The Lady Griz (2-5) and Tommies (3-6) will tip off at 7 p.m. in what will be Montana's last home game for more than a month.

The Lady Griz opened the Big Sky-Summit Challenge on Wednesday with a feel-good 86-56 road win at North Dakota that snapped a five-game losing streak and gave Montana its first Division I win of the season.

St. Thomas also won on Wednesday, also claiming its first Division I win of the season with a 74-66 home victory over Northern Arizona.

Coverage: Saturday's game will stream on ESPN+ and can be heard on KGRZ 1450 AM/92.7 FM and the Varsity Network, with Ace Sauerwein on the call.

Storylines:

* Saturday's game was originally scheduled for a 2 p.m. tip but got moved to 7 p.m. to accommodate that afternoon's FCS playoff football game between Montana and South Dakota State, which kicks off at noon inside Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

* Montana will be playing at home for the third time in four games on Saturday night, and it will be the Lady Griz' final game in Missoula until early January.

Montana is off from games next week for finals, then heads to Texas for three games before a short Christmas break. The Lady Griz will play at Houston, then face Abilene Christian and Tarleton State at ACU's Christmas Classic.

The Lady Griz open Big Sky play at Northern Arizona and Northern Colorado on Jan. 1 and 3 before getting Idaho at home on Thursday, Jan. 8.

It's the first time since the 1997-98 season that Montana will go more than a month between home games.

* Through seven games this season, Montana has played in only one that has been decided by fewer than 24 points.

The Lady Griz have wins of 37 and 30 points, with four of their five losses coming by 24 or more points.

The only game that had any fourth-quarter drama was BYU's 70-69 win in Missoula last month that came down to a Montana miss at the buzzer.

* Montana and St. Thomas, which began the move from NCAA Division III to Division I in 2020, a transition that was finalized in June, are meeting for the first time.

* After Wednesday's nine games of the Big Sky-Summit Challenge, the Summit League leads 5-4. Montana, Northern Colorado, Idaho State and Eastern Washington collected the Big Sky's four wins.

There will be nine more games on Saturday, the last of them the St. Thomas-Montana game.

* Jocelyn Land went for 30 points in Wednesday's win at North Dakota, Montana's first 30-point game since Carmen Gfeller scored 34 in Montana's home win over Montana State in February 2022.

It was Montana's 44th 30-point game in program history, only the third since 2016, joining Gfeller's output against Montana State in 2021-22 and Jace Henderson's 31-point game against Idaho in January 2019.

Land owns one of 61 30-point scoring games by an NCAA Division I player this season. It's the most points scored by a Big Sky player in 2025-26.

* Wednesday's 86-56 win was Montana's largest margin of victory over a Division I opponent since defeating Portland State 87-46 at home in 2023-24. It was the Lady Griz' largest margin of victory on the road since winning 87-55 at Weber State, also in 2023-24.

* Montana went 19 for 38 from the 3-point line in Wednesday's win in Grand Forks, matching the program record for makes set against Sacramento State in 2023-24.

That total is tied for the most made by an NCAA Division I team this season. Florida State also made 19 in its loss to Oklahoma on Sunday.

* Montana leads the nation in threes attempted (34.7/g) and jumped up to second in threes made (11.3/g), trailing only Fairfield (12.5/g).

Jocelyn Land ranks 25th nationally at 3.0 makes per game.

* Montana had nine players make at least one 3-pointer in Wednesday's win, a program record. The previous record of eight players making a three had been accomplished five times in program history, including against BYU last month.

* Wednesday's win was Montana's seventh straight over North Dakota and its second-largest margin of victory, trailing the Lady Griz' 77-45 home win in what was UND's first season as a full Division I member in 2012-13.

* Montana's 49.2 percent shooting effort on Wednesday was its best in the last 17 games dating back to last season. … The Lady Griz out-rebounded their opponent on Wednesday for the first time since finishing +16 in their season-opening win over Seattle Pacific.

* Mack Konig, now at 1,110 points, moved past 1999-2000 Big Sky Conference MVP Linda Weyler on Montana's career scoring list on Wednesday, up to 27th. She'll move past eight more players in the coming weeks on her way to 1,200.

* Konig grabbed a career-high seven rebounds at North Dakota, Aby Shubert matched a career high with four made 3-pointers, Rae Ehrman scored a season-high 14 points off the bench. … Ehrman is 9 for 19 (.474) from the 3-point line the last three games.

* Montana has a NET ranking of 219, St. Thomas sits at 317. … First-year Lady Griz Zoey Washington played at St. Thomas the last two seasons.

At a glance (St. Thomas): The Tommies have a unique story, involuntarily kicked out of the NCAA Division III Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in 2019 by the other league schools for essentially winning too much across a majority of MIAC sports.

The women's basketball program under longtime coach Ruth Sinn was no different, winning 20 or more games each season from 2009-10 until St. Thomas got the boot. That run of success included seasons of 30-2 in 2011-12, 30-1 in 2014-15, 31-1 in 2016-17 and 30-2 in 2018-19.

The Tommies made the NCAA Division III national semifinals in 2012, '17 and '19.

St. Thomas began its transition from Division III to Division I in 2020 and gained full Division I status this past June.

The Tommies have slowly been getting traction since the move, going 7-21 in 2021-22, 13-17 in 2022-23, 15-16 in 2023-24 and 17-13 last year, when they went 9-7 in the Summit League, their first winning record in league.

Sinn is in the Tommie Athletics Hall of Fame from her playing days (1980-84). She has been St. Thomas's head coach since 2005-06. Prior to that, she was the head coach at Apple Valley (Minn.) High School for 16 seasons.

St. Thomas was picked fifth in the preseason Summit League poll behind a strong quartet of teams in South Dakota State, North Dakota State, Oral Roberts and South Dakota. Those top four teams in the poll are currently 25-10.

St. Thomas opened the season with an 85-36 loss at now 9-0 and No. 10-ranked Iowa State before playing its first game in UST's new Lee & Penny Anderson Arena, a 67-61 setback to Army.

The Tommies followed with close home losses to Eastern Michigan and NJIT before picking up their first win of the season over Alaska Anchorage at the Great Alaska Shootout.

St. Thomas enters Saturday night on a two-game winning streak, 77-40 at home over Wisconsin-Stout and Wednesday's 74-66 home win over Northern Arizona, UST's first Division I win of the season.

The Tommies lost their top four scorers off last year's team, three to graduation, one via transfer to Miami (Ohio).

Sophomore Alyssa Sand, the team's fifth-leading scorer as a freshman a season ago, leads the team in scoring (14.1/g), rebounding (7.4/g), blocks (12) and steals (14).

Senior Faith Feuerbach averages 11.3 points, junior Savannah McGowan, in her first year after transferring from Illinois State, averages 9.8 points and 4.8 rebounds.

UST assistant coach Madison McKeever played under Dawn Plitzuweit at South Dakota, part of teams that went 110-24 over four years. She scored 10 points in USD's 64-41 win over Montana at Dahlberg Arena in 2018-19, nine in South Dakota's 96-64 win over the Lady Griz in Vermillion in 2019-20.

Upcoming: Finals week, then off to Texas for three games in five days against Houston, Abilene Christian and Tarleton State.

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Players Mentioned

Rae Ehrman

Mack Konig

Jocelyn Land

Aby Shubert

Zoey Washington

University of Montana Athletics