By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN
Thursday Night will see the final regular season appearance for an outstanding group of Lady Griz seniors…Kenzie Da Boer, Katie Baker, Alexandra Hurley and Alyssa Smith have been a part of 68 wins for UM and an impressive roll to the 2011 NCAA tournament. Thursday against Southern Utah, the Lady Griz have a chance to secure their first 20-win season in 4 years. Last season the Lady Griz broke a 2 year skid on Senior Night with a win over MSU.
Southern Utah spiced up the Big Sky race last Saturday with a win at Northern Colorado and could do more damage in Thursday’s game in Missoula and a return match in Cedar City with Northern Colorado. This will be the first visit to Dahlberg Arena for the Southern Utah women since January of 1995. The T-Birds strongest area is offensive rebounding where they sport three of the top 7 leaders in league play: Hailey Moreland, Tayler Anderson and Kimie Hawkins.
A little extra incentive heading into Saturday’s afternoon UM-MSU game in Bozeman. The game with the Lady Griz is Senior Day for the MSU women. Over the past 4 years the Lady Griz and Lady Cats have split their 8 meetings, with MSU winning their lone post-season meeting with the Lady Griz last March in the Big Sky quarterfinals in Pocatello. Also entering the weekend UM has won 68 games over the past 4 seasons while MSU has 69 wins over all in the last 4 years.
The Bobcats host the Griz Saturday Night in a game that will go a long way to determine who will host the Big Sky Tournament and who else will be in the event. Saturday March 2 has been good to the Bobcats as the last 2 times the Cats played on Saturday March 2nd, they won to claim the Big Sky regular season title. March 2nd is a good day for cats in general as it is the Birthday of Dr. Seuss (green eggs and ham, anybody)? The Montana Grizzlies have hosted the Big Sky tournament 5 times over the years but of the 5 tournaments the MSU Bobcats were not a part of any of those events, something they would like to change this year.
Twenty-Five years ago today (February 26, 1988) The Iowa Lady Hawkeyes lost a at home to Illinois ending Iowa’s shot at a perfect season. The Iowa loss meant that there was but one undefeated Division I team in the country (men or women) and that team was the Montana Lady Griz who would win their first 26 games of the season before falling by 2 at MSU
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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.