Lady Griz present annual awards

It almost felt like a Where am I and who is this team I'm watching? kind of dream, those magical few days in Boise last month at the Big Sky Conference Championship, when Montana put its heavy baggage from the season aside and played like so many Lady Griz teams over the decades have performed in the postseason.

If anyone had been picking brackets beforehand, not many would have gone with the No. 6 seed, not after Montana went 0-2 against Idaho, its quarterfinal opponent, during the regular season. Not with Northern Arizona on that side of the tournament field, a team that had defeated the Lady Griz badly twice during the regular season by a combined 39 points.

Not with Montana State seemingly marching on a golden path toward a title, the team that had played so well from opening day, one of its highlights on a season-long list of them a 98-66 home win over the Lady Griz, the Bobcats' largest ever against their in-state rivals.

Indeed, nothing to see here. Until Montana became a team you couldn't get enough of, getting scrappy and downright ornery on the defensive end, the calling card of so many Lady Griz teams from that past, then opening things up offensively, spreading teams out and interim head coach Nate Harris giving the keys and the controls to point guard Mack Konig and turning her loose.

It started the weekend prior, when Konig, over the final three regular-season games, those coming in rapid succession over five days, averaged 16.3 points on 65.4 percent shooting, 8.7 assists and 4.7 rebounds as Montana averaged 74 points per game and won two of three.

Something was maybe happening here. But would it travel to Boise? Did it ever.

Up two at the half on No. 3 Idaho in a quarterfinal game, Montana simply overwhelmed the Vandals in the second half, building a 59-40 lead early in the fourth quarter and ultimately winning 65-54, Konig going for 20 points and six assists.

Certainly Northern Arizona, destined for a title-game match-up with Montana State, the Big Sky's top two teams all season, would provide the season-ending road block for the Lady Griz, right? Right?

It certainly looked that way when the Lumberjacks went up 14 late in the first half and took a 35-26 lead to the locker room. Montana had gone just 1-16 all season when down at the break, the lone win a routine victory over last-place Portland State, and these Lumberjacks were no Vikings.

The lead was 10 late in the third quarter, seven going into the fourth, a between-periods break when Konig must have snuck off the court, gone into the recesses of Idaho Central Arena, found a phone booth and emerged with a maroon-colored cape.

Northern Arizona didn't know what was coming, or what had hit it when it did, the key sequence being back-to-back 3-pointers by Konig in less than 30 seconds to turn a seven-point NAU lead into a one-point game with seven minutes still to be played. The Lumberjacks hadn't been expecting this. Few, if any, had.

Over the game's final five minutes, there were seven ties and nine lead changes of incredible tenseness, the defining shot a pull-up by Konig with 37 seconds left that gave Montana the lead for good. Her two ice-cold free throws with six seconds left turned a one-possession game into an improbable Lady Griz victory, at least to us if not to them. For the first time in months, they looked like believers in themselves.

When the dust settled and jaws had been returned to their locked and upright position, the stat sheet showed that Konig had finished with a career-high 29 points, 17 of those coming in the fourth quarter. Between field goal attempts and free throws, Konig took 11 shots in the final period. She didn't miss a single one of them.

"When Mack was at her best, we were at our best," says Harris, who ditched first the acting title, then the interim tag when he was elevated to head coach shortly after the season. "The last six games of the season, she played her best basketball and it's not a coincidence that we as a team played our best basketball of the season."

That left the simple matter of facing Montana State in the championship, Montana's first appearance in the title game in a decade, the Bobcats rolling in with a 29-3 record and wins of 92-60 over Northern Colorado in the quarterfinals and 75-42 over Idaho State in the semifinals. Montana would just be the final nail for the hammer that Montana State had been wielding all season long, right? Right?

Konig scored the game's opening five points, then assisted on an MJ Bruno 3-pointer that put Montana up 15-3 less than six minutes in. If people were wondering if the Lady Griz could do it again, they had their answer. They had shown up for one more fight, fatigue from three games in three days hardly even noticeable, not with the confidence juice they were mainlining.

Fast-forward to the fourth quarter and Konig's final points of the game early in the period evened the score at 47-47. There would be nine made baskets over the final eight minutes of the game, each one feeling more momentous than the last, punch by one team, counter-punch by the other. And down to the wire they would go.

Had Montana won, the title-winning play would have come from the hands of Dani Bartsch, who ran to space at the top of the key when Konig attacked the paint in the closing seconds. Konig jump-stopped, pivoted and fired a pass to an open Bartsch, who drained it to give Montana a 57-56 lead with seven seconds left. Down 56-52 going into the final minute, Montana now had the lead, seven seconds from immortality.

That Montana State won, literally, at the buzzer, meant instead of earning MVP honors, Konig was just all-tournament, her 62 points in Boise trailing only Shannon Cate's 75 from more than three decades earlier as the most scored by a Lady Griz at a single Big Sky tournament. Her 19 assists? No Lady Griz has ever had more at a single tournament.

On Thursday night at the team's annual postseason banquet, Konig was named the team's Mary Louise Pope Zimmerman Most Valuable Player, an honor she shared with Gina Marxen last season. This year she took the stage alone.

"Mack has always been an incredibly talented player. I thought she took her consistency and her aggressiveness to another level down the stretch," said Harris. "Nobody was a better marker of, when they're good, we're good, than her. She proved her mettle and definitely set the tone that she is going to be one of the best players in the league coming back next season."

If Konig was the face of Montana's resurgence in Boise, it was the team's defensive effort that was the solid foundation from which everything good emerged.

In the quarterfinals, Montana held Idaho to 54 points on 33.9 percent shooting, a dozen points below the Vandals' season scoring average. Northern Arizona averaged nearly 80 points on the season and had put up 96 on Montana in Missoula in February. But this was a new day, a new team. In the semifinals, the Lumberjacks scored 67, making only eight baskets the entire second half, forced to look to Sophie Glancey time and time again when nothing else was working. In the end, even that failed to work.

It wasn't that long before the championship game against Montana State, just two and a half weeks earlier, that the Bobcats put up 98 points on the Lady Griz, a missed 3-pointer by Natalie Picton in the final seconds from scoring the most points ever put up against Montana. By any team. Ever.

In the championship game, Montana State scored 58 points, 14 below its season average, the Bobcats scoring a mere 23 points in the second half, an elite team forced to look decidedly mid.

Bruno, who was named the Julie Deming Outstanding Defensive Player on Thursday night, was the primary defender on Idaho's Olivia Nelson, who needed 20 shots to score 17 points, on Northern Arizona's Taylor Feldman, who scored a single point on 0-of-8 shooting, on Montana State's Esmeralda Morales, who had three turnovers in the final two minutes of the championship game.

All three were first-team All-Big Sky Conference selections, Morales also the MVP. Bruno, who did not make the five-player Big Sky Conference All-Defensive Team, mostly ate their collective lunches.

"A lot of times those defensive awards go to someone who racks up a bunch of steals or has a lot of blocks, things you can measure," said Harris. "What makes MJ so good are the things you can't measure. You can't measure effort or how much it matters to them. What she did defensively down the stretch in our biggest games was key for us to accomplish what we accomplished late in the season."

Had Montana State not scored on a rebound put-back at the buzzer in the championship game, had Bartsch's 3-point shot been the title-winner, it would have been Bruno's pick of Morales in the final minute that would have gone down in Lady Griz lore. With Morales's eyes looking ahead, Bruno snuck up behind the MVP, stripped her, collected the loose ball and set up Bartsch's (almost) heroics.

"She didn't do anything special," says Harris of the play Bruno made late in the championship game. With everything in a frenzy, with the crowd on its feet, Bruno simply did what Bruno does. "She just played harder than anybody else. It was an effort play. That's what MJ's super power is defensively. She's willing to play harder than you. She has grit and resolve."

After Morales had turned the ball over three times in a minute and a half in the final two minutes of the most important game of her life, Montana State did the unthinkable. The Bobcats went with Plan B for the potential winning shot. Plan A was too rattled. Bruno had Morales flustered.

"MJ wore her down to the point where we had a chance to win because of the way she guarded (Morales)," says Harris. "We had a chance to win because Morales was off-kilter a little bit. That was MJ just staying in the game. She didn't panic, she didn't change. She just kept doing the same right thing over and over and over."

If the lasting image of Bruno's two seasons as a Lady Griz isn't her in a defensive stance, ready to make life miserable for another opposing ball-handler, it would be of her pregame, hidden within a circle formed by her captivated teammates as Bruno led them through another pre-game battle cry. She was the match that lit the fuse, the straw that stirred the drink.

She got them ready before the game, then made sure they stayed on point after the game tipped off. "We had a lot of very obvious award winners this year, and MJ being our most inspirational was one of those," said Harris. "This award makes a lot of sense."

What Bruno did off the court, bringing her teammates to a frothing readiness, she also brought to the court. See above, because if the topic is competition, Bruno has no off button. Or a coast button or a let's-take-it-easy button. She was all out, all the time. In two seasons as a Lady Griz, she didn't reach 400 points, but she departs having made the impact of a 1,500-point scorer.

"She was an emotional leader because she wanted it. She did not have any crazy physical gifts but she was willing to push herself more in those game scenarios than most people are willing to go. That was her thing. She was never going to give up, she was never going to give in," said Harris. "She was going to keep fighting to try to find a way."

When Avery Waddington arrived on campus last summer for offseason workouts, her talent could hardly fit inside the gym it was so outsized. A 6-foot-3 shooter/slasher/finisher who could score from arc to basket and anywhere in between? Her potential was off the charts.

She was named the Grace Geil Most Improved Player on Thursday because of what she did with that talent as the season progressed, turning it into reliable production that the team could count on every game out.

Waddington had a splashy debut, going for 13 points, five rebounds, three steals and a blocked shot in Montana's season opener at Gonzaga, then had the usual highs and lows of a first-year college basketball player.

Something changed when Montana hosted Montana State in late January and Waddington put up 21 points on the Bobcats, 15 in the fourth quarter when she went from freshman to baller in front of more than 3,400 fans. Waddington had arrived.

Over the season's final 12 games, she 10 times had 10 or more points. At the conference tournament, she was one of the best players in Boise, not on Montana's team but in the tournament field, averaging 14.7 points on 50 percent shooting and 7.7 rebounds over three games. What she had become has Montana's fans already looking forward to next season, everyone else across the league thinking, uh-oh, three more years of this?

For the season she ended up averaging 10.0 points and 6.0 rebounds with a ridiculous shooting slash line of .458/.372/.900. Her 319 points on the season were the second-most ever for a true freshman in program history, behind only Hollie Tyler.

"Avery went from being a talent to being a dependable basketball player, someone who could be counted on, which is more than most freshmen get to," said Harris. "Not a lot of freshmen get by on talent alone and she wasn't going to be any different. She needed to buy into what college basketball is and the effort that it takes, the commitment and the consistency that it takes.

"That's where her growth was, how she showed up every single day. By the end of the year, she was somebody we were really, really counting on. She went from being this incredible talent to being this incredible, dependable, very important player for us. That was her growth."

Now in its second year, the Iron Lady Griz Award went to Macy Donarski. After missing last season recovering from a preseason knee injury, Donarski averaged more than 12 minutes mostly playing off the bench this past season.

"Macy is a kid who attacks everything, so it doesn't surprise me at all that she attacks the weight room," said Harris. "She tries to get better every single day, every chance she gets."

The award is decided upon and was presented on Thursday night by the team's strength and conditioning coach Mitch Mussell, who plays a critical behind-the-scenes role, that position even more important when he's working hand-in-hand with a player returning from injury. When it's an ACL recovery? It's a months-long grind based on trust and patience on both sides.

"From Day 1 as a freshman, I noticed she had a really strong work ethic," said Mussell. "She attacks everything she goes into. What made me want to give her this award is because of what she went through in her recovery. She's always go, go, go, what's next? I found myself having to pull her back."

You wouldn't have known of her injury had you watched Donarski play this past season. She'll stick her nose where she probably shouldn't at times. She'll take the ball to the basket when the opening is there, no matter if the coast is clear or if there is a 6-foot-3 post player waiting for her at the rim. She steps on the court unafraid.

"She is somebody who is always going to put her body on the line, whether it's in the weight room or in games," added Mussell. "It showed a lot this year as she played more and more. You saw that determination. It's a culmination of everything she's been through from freshman year, coming back and now getting to play again."

Dani Bartsch last season was named Montana's winner of the Theresa Rhoads Award for being the player who best exemplifies Lady Griz basketball. It was no surprise that she repeated as the Rhoads winner on Thursday night. When it's a character thing, when it's who you are, it's not something that comes and goes. It's foundational, part of a person.

In the classroom, she is a three-time College Sports Communicators Academic All-District selection and will soon be a four-time Academic All-Big Sky Conference pick, things that come your way when you have a 3.67 GPA as an accounting major.

After grabbing more rebounds last season than any player in program history – and that list is a who's who of Lady Griz royalty – she made it to No. 2 on the all-time career list, finishing at 897, 55 from matching Hollie Tyler's program record for no other reason than she gave everything she had for the program, including her health and wellness. Ultimately her body began to tell her, enough is enough. She battled on as best she could anyway.

"Whether it's off the court, on the court, as a teammate, as a player who's set records, being a pillar in the community, someone people seek out, who say, I want my kid to meet you, I think that's Dani and something she has always stood for," said Harris.

"What stands out is how much she cared about representing this program well. She never took for granted the opportunity or what she was representing. She wanted to leave this program better than she found it, and she did that in spades. She set the trajectory toward a different level than it was."

In the end, that will be Bartsch's lasting impact, stepping aside, releasing her hold on the program and sending it forward to bigger and better things, Bartsch as rocket booster, a player done and now left behind but never to be forgotten.

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Dani Bartsch

MJ Bruno

Macy Donarski

Mack Konig

Gina Marxen

Avery Waddington

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