By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN
Tuesday Night the Montana Lady Griz close out the non-conference portion of their schedule with an encounter in Laramie with the University of Wyoming The rivalry between the Lady Griz and the Cowgirls has taken an unusual twist in recent years. Both Montana and Wyoming are renowned for their home court advantage, but the last three seasons the visiting team has won in this rivalry, including a 69-59 win by the Lady Griz in 2011 in Laramie.
Hannah Doran has waited patiently for her chance to shine and now she is off and running with her chance. Doran is currently second in the Big Sky in 3-pt. field goal accuracy at 46.7% from beyond the arc. Doran credits “Monte” with first making her interested in coming to UM.
It is very appropriate that UM-Western is coming to play at the Adams Center this week. 60 years ago this week the UM Field house opened and the first game ever played in the building was the UM freshman team vs. what was then Western Montana College. Western defeated the Cubs and then defending national champs Indiana defeated the Griz varsity in the main event.
The Bulldogs of UMW are coming off a season that saw them reach the NAIA Elite 8 for the first time ever.
Steve Keller now head coach at Western three times brought teams into Dahlberg Arena as a high School coach for state tournament play, and each time his teams finished in the top 4, once overcoming an 18 point first quarter deficit.
A check on 10 of the winningest programs in FCS football over the last 5 seasons showed some interesting and impressive Stats. Since the start of the 2009 season North Dakota has won the most games among FCS schools with 53 victories. Second on the FCS win list is Eastern Washington with 50 wins and third is the Montana Grizzlies with 47. Also in the top 10 are the MSU Bobcats with 44 wins.
Fifty years ago this coming Friday the Libby Loggers ventured into the brand new Hamilton High school gym to take on the Hamilton Broncs. Hamilton led by 12 in the middle of the third quarter when Libby coach Bill Racicot got exasperated with his team picked up his clipboard and headed to the locker room. “If you’re not going to listen to me I”ll just go to the bus” he said. The Loggers rallied to tie the score late in the game. Hamilton took the ball out and ran a play but instead of getting the ball to their leader scorer (future Big Sky Commissioner Doug Fullerton) the ball went to a wide open Doug Waldo who dropped it in for the win. Did Libby forget to keep track of “Where’s Waldo?”
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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.