UM Sports Trivia | Week of Jan 19

By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN

The Montana Grizzlies 62-47 win over the MSU Bobcats Saturday marked the ninth straight win in the series for UM. Going through the files, the last time the Griz won that many in a row over the Cats came from 1974-78 when the Griz won 10 in a row (yes, in 1977 the Griz had to vacate a pair of wins over the Cats) Robin Selvig and the Lady Griz had near complete domination over the Lady Cats as Selvig won his first 25 pairings against MSU and 34 of the first 35 games.

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady on Super Bowl Sunday joins the elite group of quarterbacks to either win 4 Super Bowls (Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw) or the group that includes Fran Tarkington, John Elway and Jim Kelly to lose 3 or more Super Bowls. One pundit noted after the Pats 2012 loss to the New York Giants that Brady has not won a Super Bowl since becoming a dad (that solves the mystery.)

The Seattle Seahawks are the first NFC team to reach consecutive Super Bowls since Green Bay. Seventeen years ago, as most Packer fans recall, a win over New England was followed by a loss the next year to Denver.

BBQThe Montana Grizzly basketball team has posted impressive defensive stats this season. The Griz lead the Big Sky in scoring defense, field goal defense and 3-point field goal defense. Those stats will be tested this coming weekend as Southern Utah has the top 3-point shooter, Casey Oliverson and overall field goal percentage shooter in Trey Kennedy.

Martin Breunig leads the Big Sky in defensive rebounds, meaning when the other team misses Breunig is usually there to catch the carom…

It is appropriate that the Lady Griz basketball team will be in Utah this weekend; they face Southern Utah in Cedar City Saturday. It was 25 years ago this week in a game at Weber State that the Lady Griz scored over 100 points in a 105-69 decision over the Wildcats.

In Honor of Martin Luther King Day a sports related factoid. It was in Memphis that Dr. King was killed in 1968. Ralph Abernathy took over leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that help lead the fight against Segregation. At the time of the King assassination Memphis’s Liberty Stadium was segrated. In 2011, in the Liberty Bowl football game, a familiar name came to notice. Ralph David Abernathy III, the grandson of the Civil Rights leader, took a punt back 88 yards for the winning points as the Bearcats of Cincinnati defeated Vanderbilt in the Bowl Game 31-24.

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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.