By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN
In the eight seasons prior to Wayne Tinkle becoming head Grizzly basketball coach the program produced 123 wins, a run that included three trips to the NCAA tournament and 1 regular season title. Now in his 7th season at the Grizzly helm Tinkle will claim his 123rd win with the Grizzlies next victory.
On Thursday night the Griz host an Eastern Washington team fueled by two players that grew up far from Cheney Washington. Venty Jois is from Australia and spent last season on a club team learning the moiré physical style common to U.S. college basketball. Justin Crosgile began his college career in Philadelphia playing for St. Joseph’s of the Atlantic 10.
Portland State features nearly an entire roster of players who began their college career somewhere other than Portland State. Twelve of the 15 players on the PSU roster transfer in from another college, including 2 from Washington State where former PSU coach Ken Bone is the head coach.
The Montana Lady Griz once again are shining on defense as two of the top 6 in shot blocking in the Big Sky stats are Lady Griz, Katie Baker andc Selvig. The Lady Griz will be on a mission this Saturday when they venture into the Stott center to face Portland State. The Lady Griz have not won at PSU since in regular season play, however in 2011 Montana beat Portland state on the Vikings’ home court in the Big Sky tournament title game.
When the Indianapolis Colts face the Baltimore Ravens Sunday it will have many story lines. Baltimore fans have to groan at the irony of their old team coming back for a play-off game with a rookie QB from Stanford who was the top draft pick (30 years ago the Baltimore Colts thought they had a kid from Stanford, but John Elway opted to go to Denver). The Colts have won both play-off meetings with the Ravens.
The Cincinnati Bengals have made the AFC play-offs 5 times in the last 20 years but it has been 22 years since the Bengals won a post-season game. The Houston Texans might draw from another Houston team, the Oilers. Twenty years ago this week the Oilers blew a 32-point halftime lead against the Buffalo Bills.
The last time the Washington Redskins hosted a play-off game Bill Clinton was in the White House and the Seattle Seahawks were in the AFC and preparing for their final game at the Kingdome. For Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson this is the third team in the last three seasons he has led into the post-season–North Carolina State, Wisconsin and now Seattle.
The only time the Vikings and Packers met in the post-season was 8 years ago as Dante Culpepper and Randy Moss stunned the Packers. Ironically the Vikings only two play-off wins since that win at Lambeau came with former Packer great Brett Favre as their quarterback.
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Chris Walterskirchen has been an observer of Montana sports for nearly half a century. A Kalispell native, Chris has worked in various capacities for professional and college sports organization of at various times: ranging from announcing and statistical work to the concessions and even a stint as a costumed mascot.
Chris has academic degrees in communications and elementary education. His style of sports trivia involves more than just who won and who lost, but also focuses on the obscure or human side of sports. In this blog you will learn things like the Grizzly football team has won 210 games over the 19 seasons since they have had Monte as their mascot or that UNLV is the only school that both the Griz and Lady Griz have both faced in the NCAA basketball tournament
When not following sports Chris enjoys taking care of animals of all kinds (a peacock rescue?) and reading to pre-schoolers.