UM Sports Trivia | Week of June 20

By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN

Missoula Osprey manager Joe Mather is doing something this season that none of the other three managers to guide the O’s to a title did, come back the next year.  Even former Osprey player Andy Green left after guiding the team to the title in 2012. Green is currently the manager of the San Diego Padres.

How long have the Osprey been in Missoula?  Here’s another nugget: fashy-fielder shortstop, Jasadora Chisholm was just 16 month old when The O’s played their first game in June of 1999. As a matter of fact, the same month Chisholm was born, the Arizona Diamondbacks began their first major league training camp.
From the Big Sky to the Big West.  Two former Griz coaches signed on with teams from the Big West last week. Former Griz player and coach, Blaine Taylor, accepted the Associate Head Coaching position at UC-Irvine. The Anteaters have seen an upswing in the program under former NBA Assistant, Russell Turner. The Anteaters are coming off a season where they reached the CBI tournament title game falling in the Championship to Ivy League, Colombia. Blaine had a memorable game with the Griz facing the Anteaters in the title game of the KOA Classic in 1980. The game went to double OT before Irvine took the title and Taylor played every minute.
Jono Metsger-Jones has spent the last four season at Montana helping the program gain 84 wins over that span. Metzger-Jones will try and continue the recent improvements of the Aggies of Cal-Davis (who are a member of the Big Sky Conference for football.) Cal-Davis is a outstanding academic school and has had great success in basketball in their D-II days but have struggled at the D-I level. The Aggies earned their first post-season appearance in Division I in 2015 when they played in the NIT.
Dustin Johnson’s win at the US Open was a culmination of a lot of travails. In 2010 Johnson had a 4-shot lead heading into the final round of the US Open only to explode with an 80 in the fourth round. Later that same season he was assessed a 2-shot penalty for inadvertently improving his lie, and then in 2015  he took time off to deal with some health and emotional issues (during his hiatus a year ago, Johnson played several rounds on courses in Idaho to work on his game without the media critiquing his game.
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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.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 20th, 2016 at 8:15 pm
Category Archive: All Featured, All Sports & Recreation, Blogs, Spectator Sports, UM Athletics, University of Montana
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