By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN
- In the six seasons Wayne Tinkle was a Grizzly basketball assistant coach the program produced only 92 wins. A sweep of this week’s conference opening home stand and Tinkle will have reached the 100 win plateau in five and a half seasons.
- Tinkle’s first win as Griz head coach was against MSU-Northern on November 10th 2006. Grizzly basketball has had a phenomenal run over the last 40 years but Tinkle would become only the third coach in that span to reach the 100-win mark with the Grizzlies. Mike Montgomery got win number 100 in a win over Southeast Missouri in January of 1984. Blaine Taylor reached triple digits with a victory over Northern Arizona in Flagstaff on February 10, 1996. (The Lumberjacks coach at the time was future Pitt and UCLA coach Ben Howland.)
- On Thursday December 29, the Lady Griz Host their 32nd Holiday Classic Tournament. This year’s tourney features Idaho, North Dakota and Southern Mississippi. The Lady Griz have won their last 56 Holiday Classic Games at Dahlberg Arena, having not lost a tournament game in their own arena since January 1982 (with a loss to Drake). It should be noted, however that in 1998, the Lady Griz lost the tournament title game to Arkansas–a game that was played at the Sentinel High School gym–and NOT in Dahlberg Arena. On Thursday night’s Holiday Classic opener, the Lady Griz play Southern Mississippi. Southern Miss is coached by Joye Lee McNelis who in 2003 brought a very talented Memphis team to Missoula for the tournament and lost to Montana for the title. Ironically Montana’s last non-conference game will be against the University of North Dakota who will be in the Big Sky Conference next year.
Ten years ago Thursday is a night Monte the Griz mascot would like to forget. The lovable bear stayed on the court a little too long during a timeout and then ran over a St. Louis University player in his haste to get off the court earning him his first and only Technical Foul of his career thus far.
- On Saturday the Fighting Illini of Illinois takes on the number 4 UCLA Bruins in the Hunger Bowl in San Francisco in a matchup of two interim head coaches. Ron Zook at Illinois and Rick Neuheisel of UCLA were fired at the end of the regular season but both teams got bowl invites. So Mike Johnson gets a one game stint as Bruins head coach as does Vic Koenning at Illinois. Koenning was the head coach at Wyoming from 2000-2002 winning just 5 games in his 3 seasons at the helm of the Cowboys; he was replaced at Laramie by Joe Glenn fresh off his success at UM.