Photo by: Casandra Evans/University of Montana
10/23/2026 7:23:00 PM | Women's Basketball
They were hung with such regularity – trophies getting hoisted overhead in March, the representative banner being raised to the rafters of Dahlberg Arena a few months later – that it became the expectation, the norm for the Lady Griz basketball program under longtime coach Robin Selvig.
Over 38 seasons, from his first, in 1978-79, to his last, in 2015-16, covering 865 wins, there were only 10 that did not end with a new banner for fans to marvel at the following year, whether Montana had won a regular-season championship, a tournament title or, more often than not, both.
The last banner was affixed in place and unfurled following the 2014-15 season, after Montana won the Big Sky Conference, hosted and won the league tournament and went on to face Notre Dame in the opening round of the NCAA Championship.
That weight of history is what each of the coaches who have followed Selvig have had to bear, first Shannon Schweyen, then Mike Petrino, then Brian Holsinger, now Nate Harris. Is it an unfair burden? Sure. But each knew it also was the professional opportunity of a lifetime, to try to continue a legacy.
It's been a run now of 11 straight seasons without a banner to hang, more than the title-less seasons Selvig had over 38 years, his championships coming with such consistency that they tend to get lumped together for simplicity's sake: 24 of them, with 28 national tournament appearances.
That's why, when the next one does come, it's going to mean, if not more, at least something different. It will stand alone, bridging past to current, the hope being that it's the first of many more to follow.
"When a team becomes the next championship Lady Griz team, that team will have done something unique," said Harris this week, as he enters his second full season as head coach at Montana.
"What that team will have done will be as unique and powerful as any championship that has been won in this program's history. That team will be remembered as the one that returned this program to where it's supposed to be."
Harris has stressed from Day 1 that he's not Robin Selvig and will never try to be. He knows that's a fool's errand, chasing a hall of famer. But he was born in Montana, raised in Montana, so he knows the history, one so plump with winning that anything less is failure, failure to uphold the standard.
It doesn't matter that the game has changed, that times have changed. It's pretty simple. Montana wins. Google it. That's the expectation, through the arrival of the transfer portal, of NIL, the benchmark remaining in place.
"There is a spot next to the 2015 banner that is empty. That's the only thing we'll be graded on if this is a successful season," Harris said. "When you coach Lady Griz basketball, you are graded by the public on an all-or-nothing scale.
"Our goal is to give the public a very easy grading scale by hanging the next banner, one that says 2027. When you give a group of people a singular charge, it has a way of bringing them together."
He means this year's Lady Griz team, which looks very different than last year's Lady Griz team, and that was borne out of necessity, after Montana won only nine games last season and finished eighth in the Big Sky.
Harris and his staff left Boise last spring, after their third loss of the season to Montana State, the program that has most stepped up in the post-Selvig Big Sky, with a plan in place, of what had to happen if things were going to be different in 2026-27.
They had to move quickly, in this era of the transfer portal, which meant making space on the roster for reinforcements. Eight Lady Griz who played in games last season would not be returning, either through graduation or tough decisions that impacted players who otherwise were eligible to return.
"There is an accountability that will always come down to me," said Harris. "If we're not good enough, I'm not doing a good enough job, whether that's recruiting or coaching the team we have. We have to put a product on the floor that is deserving of this program, this department, this state. That's our job.
"That can sometimes require decisions that are the hardest part of the job. The Lady Griz need to compete for championships. We will never shy away from decisions that put this program first and put it in position to be the very best in this league."
The plan was in place but it was a vision, sketched out on paper: Get longer, get more athletic, get more competitive, get deeper. Then the feeding frenzy that is the opening of the transfer portal commenced. And Harris and his staff dug in, trying to find the right pieces.
Soon enough it started to become actual names and actual faces, a new team taking shape: Dominique Nesland (High Point), Shay Shippen (Columbia), Kennedy Moore (Wake Forest), Paige Lofing (Gonzaga), Alyssa Blanck (Utah), most of whom had been recruited as high schoolers to join the Lady Griz.
This coming after the staff signed an excellent class of incoming freshmen the previous winter: Avory DeCoite (Missoula, Mont.), Kate Holmquist (Maple Grove, Minn.), Hayden Kaut (Napavine, Wash.), Kamryn Reinker (Billings, Mont.).
"What we did last year wasn't good enough. As head coach, that's something I ultimately have to fix," said Harris. "We weren't deep enough to play the way we wanted to play, to practice the way we wanted to practice, to be as physical as we wanted to be."
For the first time in the history of the program, the newcomers outnumber the team's returners, and by a large margin, nine to six. And how would that go? Harris still had Ava Cossette, Rae Ehrman, Kennedy Gillette, Jocelyn Land, Aby Shubert and Avery Waddington.
"It's been exciting because we do have some exciting young women who have come into our program," said Harris. "The challenge was going to be bringing all that together."
It's an eclectic mix of experiences, only Waddington and Ehrman, of the returners, having arrived at Montana as freshmen. The others transferred in.
Among this year's transfers, the spectrum of experience ranges from Shippen, who played just six games last season at Columbia because of injury, to Blanck, who is entering her fifth season of college basketball, after spending one at BYU, the last three at Utah.
And then there have been four true freshmen to account for. "I want to give a lot of credit to our returners and their approach," said Harris. "They've been a great example of what the best version of this program can be. They recognize we can build something special by coming together as a group."
Harris has had his newcomers since late June, so in late October he's asked for an evaluation of the five transfers, perhaps a letter grade since they are on campus and in an educational setting. Feels right.
He gives them an incomplete, not because they have failed to do anything but because they are a work in progress, as all of them should be with the first game of the season still more than a week away.
After all, no Lady Griz team ever has won a championship, has earned a banner, in October. The glory for all of those former teams came in late winter.
"I think we're talented and athletic with a wide range of skills, but we have to go out on the floor and do it. We have to compete every day," Harris said. "The grade for all of us is incomplete until March 10 at 3:30 in Boise. Hopefully that's the final buzzer of a successful championship run.
"It's hard to grade anything on October 23 when our goal and focus is on a game that is played on March 10."
Is this team different? The empirical evidence suggests it's way different. A visitor to practice will be struck by the intensity of everything, the aggressiveness, the talking, the urgency. It can be sensory overload, so much coming at you at once.
If his team last year spent the daily block of time together practicing basketball, this team is using that time to compete, and there is a big difference between the two, the latter of which better translates to game day and being prepared and ready for it.
And when the level drops, which it invariably must because these are human beings after all, not robots, he's there to remind them that each one of them, at some point in their Lady Griz recruitment or career, has said she wants to be on the team that changes things, that hangs a banner.
Is that true? Is that really what they want? Because it's not feeling like it. Then they retake the court and the level returns to 10. They want it, want it badly. Sometimes in the endless grind they just need to be reminded of what this is all for, the pursuit, hopefully the prize at the end of the road.
"I learned a lot about myself (last season)," said Harris. "We are operating much better as a coaching staff because I've done a better job of being organized and our players have a better view of where we're trying to go because we've been more clear on what we're pursuing."
The last time Montana played a game on the hallowed court inside Dahlberg Arena, the Lady Griz fell behind Northern Colorado by 17 points early in the second half. The eventual loss gave Montana a 3-10 home record for the season.
If Harris had allowed his mind to wander in that moment, down 17 in the third quarter, had he been able to picture this year's team, he would have thought, that's what we need to be.
Montana makes its public and season debut against Montana Western on Tuesday, Nov. 3, this team the Lady Griz need to be.
"I think our fans will see a much more aggressive, physical, relentless style of basketball, which is something I'll feel much more comfortable coaching, whether that's attacking the paint more aggressively, being significantly more physical on the glass and on defense," Harris said.
"People are going to see a team that has an edge to it and will win games by outworking people."
For all the new, there is still some familiar, headlined by Waddington, who last season became the first player in program history to lead the Lady Griz in points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals.
That was a good thing, as it relates to her immense all-around talents, and a bad thing, as it relates to other teams employing the tack: slow Avery, slow the Lady Griz.
And it worked. In Montana's wins last season, Waddington was sensational, averaging 17.9 points on 55.1 percent shooting and 8.1 rebounds. In the losses: 11.2 points on 41.9 percent shooting and 5.9 rebounds, with more turnovers than assists. Slow Avery, slow the Lady Griz.
There were a handful of games last season, tight in the fourth quarter, that Montana's options boiled down to Waddington against three defenders, Waddington against four defenders or Waddington against the opponent, all five of them. There was no other direction to turn.
In Montana's two-point win at Weber State, Waddington scored all 10 of her team's fourth-quarter points. In Montana's home win over Portland State, a game the Lady Griz trailed by six early in the final period, Waddington closed with 13 fourth-quarter points as Montana rallied for the victory.
"She will still be an important option, a very talented option, but we'll have the versatility and depth throughout our lineup that she won't have to be the only option," said Harris.
"That will give her more ability to make plays and be aggressive and not feel like she has to do everything. To have other options on the floor would make anyone better. She'll have more chances to play off people and play in space. It won't be her going one-on-three."
Harris probably took his Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere approach to scheduling a bit too far last season for his first team with a gauntlet that featured, without break, Oregon, Washington, South Dakota State, BYU and Utah in the first month of the season.
The Lady Griz had a shot at the buzzer to take down BYU but lost the other four games by a total of 138 points. That trauma lingered, affecting Montana the rest of the season.
It's another stacked lineup once Montana plays Montana Western, but it's a team better prepared to handle the challenge. On the road at BYU and Kansas State, home for Houston, on the road at Gonzaga.
There are some non-Division I's right before Thanksgiving, then a fun stretch to get to Christmas: at Seattle, home to open league against Northern Arizona, at UC Davis and Utah, then at home for South Dakota on Dec. 19, an early holiday gift to the program's fans, an opponent that won 26 games last year.
"We've gone from impossible (last season) to difficult. We'd like to go from difficult to manageable, but you still want to challenge yourself. You still want to fail in the non-conference," said Harris, not saying he wants his team to lose but to learn how to respond when it does. You know, life lessons.
"You have to learn how to bounce back and respond to hard things because ultimately, whether it's on a team or in life, your ability to handle things that don't go the way you want them to probably determines how far you go."
After Christmas, league begins in earnest. Then January, then February, then March, Boise, the Big Sky Championship, the title game coming on March 10, finally the time of the year, the time of the season, when banners, who gets to claim them, who gets to raise them, gets determined.
Only then will it be revealed: Is this the team? Is this the group that joins the pantheon, reserved only for champions, the one that gets the banner, the one long awaited, the one that screams out from high above: The Lady Griz are back? Only time will tell.
Over 38 seasons, from his first, in 1978-79, to his last, in 2015-16, covering 865 wins, there were only 10 that did not end with a new banner for fans to marvel at the following year, whether Montana had won a regular-season championship, a tournament title or, more often than not, both.
The last banner was affixed in place and unfurled following the 2014-15 season, after Montana won the Big Sky Conference, hosted and won the league tournament and went on to face Notre Dame in the opening round of the NCAA Championship.
That weight of history is what each of the coaches who have followed Selvig have had to bear, first Shannon Schweyen, then Mike Petrino, then Brian Holsinger, now Nate Harris. Is it an unfair burden? Sure. But each knew it also was the professional opportunity of a lifetime, to try to continue a legacy.
It's been a run now of 11 straight seasons without a banner to hang, more than the title-less seasons Selvig had over 38 years, his championships coming with such consistency that they tend to get lumped together for simplicity's sake: 24 of them, with 28 national tournament appearances.
That's why, when the next one does come, it's going to mean, if not more, at least something different. It will stand alone, bridging past to current, the hope being that it's the first of many more to follow.
"When a team becomes the next championship Lady Griz team, that team will have done something unique," said Harris this week, as he enters his second full season as head coach at Montana.
"What that team will have done will be as unique and powerful as any championship that has been won in this program's history. That team will be remembered as the one that returned this program to where it's supposed to be."
Harris has stressed from Day 1 that he's not Robin Selvig and will never try to be. He knows that's a fool's errand, chasing a hall of famer. But he was born in Montana, raised in Montana, so he knows the history, one so plump with winning that anything less is failure, failure to uphold the standard.
It doesn't matter that the game has changed, that times have changed. It's pretty simple. Montana wins. Google it. That's the expectation, through the arrival of the transfer portal, of NIL, the benchmark remaining in place.
"There is a spot next to the 2015 banner that is empty. That's the only thing we'll be graded on if this is a successful season," Harris said. "When you coach Lady Griz basketball, you are graded by the public on an all-or-nothing scale.
"Our goal is to give the public a very easy grading scale by hanging the next banner, one that says 2027. When you give a group of people a singular charge, it has a way of bringing them together."
He means this year's Lady Griz team, which looks very different than last year's Lady Griz team, and that was borne out of necessity, after Montana won only nine games last season and finished eighth in the Big Sky.
Harris and his staff left Boise last spring, after their third loss of the season to Montana State, the program that has most stepped up in the post-Selvig Big Sky, with a plan in place, of what had to happen if things were going to be different in 2026-27.
They had to move quickly, in this era of the transfer portal, which meant making space on the roster for reinforcements. Eight Lady Griz who played in games last season would not be returning, either through graduation or tough decisions that impacted players who otherwise were eligible to return.
"There is an accountability that will always come down to me," said Harris. "If we're not good enough, I'm not doing a good enough job, whether that's recruiting or coaching the team we have. We have to put a product on the floor that is deserving of this program, this department, this state. That's our job.
"That can sometimes require decisions that are the hardest part of the job. The Lady Griz need to compete for championships. We will never shy away from decisions that put this program first and put it in position to be the very best in this league."
The plan was in place but it was a vision, sketched out on paper: Get longer, get more athletic, get more competitive, get deeper. Then the feeding frenzy that is the opening of the transfer portal commenced. And Harris and his staff dug in, trying to find the right pieces.
Soon enough it started to become actual names and actual faces, a new team taking shape: Dominique Nesland (High Point), Shay Shippen (Columbia), Kennedy Moore (Wake Forest), Paige Lofing (Gonzaga), Alyssa Blanck (Utah), most of whom had been recruited as high schoolers to join the Lady Griz.
This coming after the staff signed an excellent class of incoming freshmen the previous winter: Avory DeCoite (Missoula, Mont.), Kate Holmquist (Maple Grove, Minn.), Hayden Kaut (Napavine, Wash.), Kamryn Reinker (Billings, Mont.).
"What we did last year wasn't good enough. As head coach, that's something I ultimately have to fix," said Harris. "We weren't deep enough to play the way we wanted to play, to practice the way we wanted to practice, to be as physical as we wanted to be."
For the first time in the history of the program, the newcomers outnumber the team's returners, and by a large margin, nine to six. And how would that go? Harris still had Ava Cossette, Rae Ehrman, Kennedy Gillette, Jocelyn Land, Aby Shubert and Avery Waddington.
"It's been exciting because we do have some exciting young women who have come into our program," said Harris. "The challenge was going to be bringing all that together."
It's an eclectic mix of experiences, only Waddington and Ehrman, of the returners, having arrived at Montana as freshmen. The others transferred in.
Among this year's transfers, the spectrum of experience ranges from Shippen, who played just six games last season at Columbia because of injury, to Blanck, who is entering her fifth season of college basketball, after spending one at BYU, the last three at Utah.
And then there have been four true freshmen to account for. "I want to give a lot of credit to our returners and their approach," said Harris. "They've been a great example of what the best version of this program can be. They recognize we can build something special by coming together as a group."
Harris has had his newcomers since late June, so in late October he's asked for an evaluation of the five transfers, perhaps a letter grade since they are on campus and in an educational setting. Feels right.
He gives them an incomplete, not because they have failed to do anything but because they are a work in progress, as all of them should be with the first game of the season still more than a week away.
After all, no Lady Griz team ever has won a championship, has earned a banner, in October. The glory for all of those former teams came in late winter.
"I think we're talented and athletic with a wide range of skills, but we have to go out on the floor and do it. We have to compete every day," Harris said. "The grade for all of us is incomplete until March 10 at 3:30 in Boise. Hopefully that's the final buzzer of a successful championship run.
"It's hard to grade anything on October 23 when our goal and focus is on a game that is played on March 10."
Is this team different? The empirical evidence suggests it's way different. A visitor to practice will be struck by the intensity of everything, the aggressiveness, the talking, the urgency. It can be sensory overload, so much coming at you at once.
If his team last year spent the daily block of time together practicing basketball, this team is using that time to compete, and there is a big difference between the two, the latter of which better translates to game day and being prepared and ready for it.
And when the level drops, which it invariably must because these are human beings after all, not robots, he's there to remind them that each one of them, at some point in their Lady Griz recruitment or career, has said she wants to be on the team that changes things, that hangs a banner.
Is that true? Is that really what they want? Because it's not feeling like it. Then they retake the court and the level returns to 10. They want it, want it badly. Sometimes in the endless grind they just need to be reminded of what this is all for, the pursuit, hopefully the prize at the end of the road.
"I learned a lot about myself (last season)," said Harris. "We are operating much better as a coaching staff because I've done a better job of being organized and our players have a better view of where we're trying to go because we've been more clear on what we're pursuing."
The last time Montana played a game on the hallowed court inside Dahlberg Arena, the Lady Griz fell behind Northern Colorado by 17 points early in the second half. The eventual loss gave Montana a 3-10 home record for the season.
If Harris had allowed his mind to wander in that moment, down 17 in the third quarter, had he been able to picture this year's team, he would have thought, that's what we need to be.
Montana makes its public and season debut against Montana Western on Tuesday, Nov. 3, this team the Lady Griz need to be.
"I think our fans will see a much more aggressive, physical, relentless style of basketball, which is something I'll feel much more comfortable coaching, whether that's attacking the paint more aggressively, being significantly more physical on the glass and on defense," Harris said.
"People are going to see a team that has an edge to it and will win games by outworking people."
For all the new, there is still some familiar, headlined by Waddington, who last season became the first player in program history to lead the Lady Griz in points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals.
That was a good thing, as it relates to her immense all-around talents, and a bad thing, as it relates to other teams employing the tack: slow Avery, slow the Lady Griz.
And it worked. In Montana's wins last season, Waddington was sensational, averaging 17.9 points on 55.1 percent shooting and 8.1 rebounds. In the losses: 11.2 points on 41.9 percent shooting and 5.9 rebounds, with more turnovers than assists. Slow Avery, slow the Lady Griz.
There were a handful of games last season, tight in the fourth quarter, that Montana's options boiled down to Waddington against three defenders, Waddington against four defenders or Waddington against the opponent, all five of them. There was no other direction to turn.
In Montana's two-point win at Weber State, Waddington scored all 10 of her team's fourth-quarter points. In Montana's home win over Portland State, a game the Lady Griz trailed by six early in the final period, Waddington closed with 13 fourth-quarter points as Montana rallied for the victory.
"She will still be an important option, a very talented option, but we'll have the versatility and depth throughout our lineup that she won't have to be the only option," said Harris.
"That will give her more ability to make plays and be aggressive and not feel like she has to do everything. To have other options on the floor would make anyone better. She'll have more chances to play off people and play in space. It won't be her going one-on-three."
Harris probably took his Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere approach to scheduling a bit too far last season for his first team with a gauntlet that featured, without break, Oregon, Washington, South Dakota State, BYU and Utah in the first month of the season.
The Lady Griz had a shot at the buzzer to take down BYU but lost the other four games by a total of 138 points. That trauma lingered, affecting Montana the rest of the season.
It's another stacked lineup once Montana plays Montana Western, but it's a team better prepared to handle the challenge. On the road at BYU and Kansas State, home for Houston, on the road at Gonzaga.
There are some non-Division I's right before Thanksgiving, then a fun stretch to get to Christmas: at Seattle, home to open league against Northern Arizona, at UC Davis and Utah, then at home for South Dakota on Dec. 19, an early holiday gift to the program's fans, an opponent that won 26 games last year.
"We've gone from impossible (last season) to difficult. We'd like to go from difficult to manageable, but you still want to challenge yourself. You still want to fail in the non-conference," said Harris, not saying he wants his team to lose but to learn how to respond when it does. You know, life lessons.
"You have to learn how to bounce back and respond to hard things because ultimately, whether it's on a team or in life, your ability to handle things that don't go the way you want them to probably determines how far you go."
After Christmas, league begins in earnest. Then January, then February, then March, Boise, the Big Sky Championship, the title game coming on March 10, finally the time of the year, the time of the season, when banners, who gets to claim them, who gets to raise them, gets determined.
Only then will it be revealed: Is this the team? Is this the group that joins the pantheon, reserved only for champions, the one that gets the banner, the one long awaited, the one that screams out from high above: The Lady Griz are back? Only time will tell.
Players Mentioned
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/ Women's BasketballTuesday, October 20
Tuesday, October 20
Monday, October 19
Saturday, October 17
