BUTTE — After dropping four straight road games it could have been easy for the Montana Tech men's basketball to feel like its season was slipping away.
Instead, with two regular-season contests remaining, the Orediggers dug deep and pieced together a pair of runaway wins in three days to continue their history-making run.
After rolling past Montana Western on Thursday, No. 15 Tech ran roughshod over Providence 83-52 on Saturday afternoon at the HPER Complex in a meeting between 9-5 teams to determine the regular-season league champion.
The Orediggers, who headed into this season as the three-time defending regular-season and tournament champ, stormed to a fourth-straight league title and locked up the No. 1 seed at next week's Frontier Conference tournament.
"It's quite amazing, honestly, especially after the last couple of weeks that we went through," said Tech head coach Adam Hiatt. "Next man up mentality, we had some guys step up in big moments. But just really proud of the culture of this program. This was a culture win for us."
Tech senior Keeley Bake led the way for Tech with 20 points, Michael Ure added 17 and Hayden Diekhans scored 12 as the Orediggers (22-6 overall, 10-5 in Frontier play) quickly built a double-digit lead against the Argos and led 44-25 at halftime.
"We knew going into this week that we needed to go 2-0," said Bake. "The points are fun, but I'm just super happy that we got the win and were able to bring another championship to Montana Tech."
The Orediggers converted 30 of 51 field goals to Providence's 19 of 61.
The Argos (15-12, 9-6) were led by 12 points from Antoine Boyd Jr., 10 from Nikolajs Atanasovs and eight from Ryan Chavez.
The earlier women's game saw Providence pull away late en route to a 67-59 victory over Tech as the Argos secured the top-two tournament seed. Rocky Mountain College fended off Montana Western 85-81 to lock up the top seed.
Providence (19-7, 9-5) got a game-high 16 points from Keanna Salave'a and 10 apiece from Ashlee Maldonado and Monique Carter as the Argos built a double-digit first-half lead, led 25-24 at halftime and then pulled away in the fourth quarter.
Tech (18-10, 9-6) got 14 points from Hadley Humphreys and 10 from Aubrie Rademacher.
The Providence men and women and Tech men all receive first-round byes at the Frontier tournament which begins next Sunday at the Four Seasons Arena in Great Falls. The Oredigger women will face MSU-Northern in the opening round.
