By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN
In the world of Big Sky Conference basketball parity has been acheived. Combined conference wins with both the men’s and women’s league find that five schools have already won at least 12 conference games this season. Weber State men’s and women’s teams have 13 wins while UM, MSU, Idaho and Eastern Washington have 12 each.
With their win Saturday over MSU the Grizzly men have now won exactly 100 games since the start of the 2011-12 season. Not only have the Griz won 11 in a row over the Bobcats but in the time that it has taken the MSU Bobcats to win their last 100 games the Griz have amassed 165 wins.
Walter Wright seems to be a strong candidate for the Big Sky “Newcomer of the Year” award as the talented guard is leading the Big Sky in 3-point shooting percentage in league games and has now cracked the top 10 in free throw percentage.
The Montana Lady Griz are part of a major logjam in the Big Sky standings in an effort to qualify as one of the top 4 seeds in the Big Sky tournament. A spot among the league’s top 4 means waiting until Wednesday for the first game at the Big Sky as opposed to teams 5-12 who will have to play on Monday March 7. Currently the Lady Griz are two and a half games behind Weber State in the battle for a first round bye.
Sacramento State is nationally ranked in scoring with over 90 points per game. Hornets guard Breanna Burgos is perfect from the free throw line in Conference play with 18 straight makes in 18 tries. Montana’s Kayleigh Valley is fifth from line in conference play but has taken more than 70 free throws in Big Sky play.
In league play Portland State’s CiCi West leads the league in rebounding. What makes West’s acheivement even more impressive is that she is a 5-9 guard.
A Carolina Panthers win Sunday in the Super Bowl will make them the first “cat” mascot team to win a Super Bowl. The Panthers would also be the seventh franchise in the last 17 years to wins it first Super Bowl–the Saints and Seahawks are the most recent first-time winners.
Cam Newton could become only the third former Heisman Trophy winning quarterback to lead a team to a Super Bowl title. Roger Staubach with the Cowboys and Jim Plunkett with the Raiders are the only QBs to win a Heisman and then go on to the Super Bowl. Both Staubach and Plunkett claimed two Super Bowls for their franchises.
No Super Bowl has gone into overtime and none have ended in a shutout.
If the Denver Broncos win on Sunday it will be the first crown for an AFC West franchise since Denver’s last title in 1999.
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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.