MISSOULA — Celebrations were everywhere at Dahlberg Arena late Monday evening and into the early moment of Tuesday morning, because the Montana Grizzlies defeated rival Eastern Washington to clinch a share of the Big Sky Conference men's basketball title.
It's a moment the Grizzlies have worked toward all season and, finally, accomplished.
PHOTOS: MONTANA GRIZZLIES WIN SHARE OF BIG SKY TITLE
"I've seen stuff like this on TV," fifth-year guard Brandon Whitney said. "Obviously, I've never won in my career until today, but to actually be in this moment and to stick it out for five years, it just feels great and it makes me feel like all the work and staying paid off.
"I don't think it's fully sunk in yet. Everybody works so hard, my teammates, the coaching staff. This started in the offseason and it just feels great, and I'm super happy for everybody."
The confetti flew and the yells were joyous as Montana cut down the first of what it hopes is at least two nets this season.
But it'd been since 2019 that the Grizzlies had a moment like this, and you could see a weight lifted when it was accomplished.
"We've kind of flirted with it in 2020. We just weren't good enough down the stretch in March, and then we thought we had a team that could win the tournament and there was no tournament," UM head coach Travis DeCuire said, alluding to the canceled tournament in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "And you graduate all those seniors. So you've got two years in a row where you graduated a ton of seniors and were just building and rebuilding.
"The transfer portal wasn't a great place to rebuild in 2021-2022. Not for us. This year, we got lucky. And when I say that, we got guys that wanted to win as opposed to, you know, individual things that go in pockets, and fortunately for us it it worked out. Once we got healthy, we hit the ground running. But most importantly, this is a very selfless group that's fun to coach."
Still, with nine new faces, the Grizzlies found the right mix of talents this season to reach above and beyond.
"It says a lot about who they are, who raised them, how they were raised, where they come from," DeCuire said, "because I think that that has a lot to do with it, is, you know, whether you've dealt with adversity or things haven't always gone your way, and you're selfless in situations like this. It's very easy to just be concerned about your own individual goals, so it's very difficult to do.
"And this has just been a really special group and a very deep group, and even the guys that haven't been in and participating in terms of minutes played and baskets scored and assists made, they participate in terms of our preparation and the way they support their teammates, whether on the floor (or off), and that's what's made this special."
"I come from a winning culture and that's what I wanted to do here, is win. And we got the job done. Shout out to the coaching staff, shout out to the players. You know, we're happy, but we can't be satisfied because we got to do it again," UM sophomore guard Money Williams added.
Individual milestones have come, including DeCuire's breaking of the program wins record and Brandon Whitney surpassing his coach as UM's new assists leader, which came on a huge play to Malik Moore Monday night. Whitney now has 436 career assists to his name while DeCuire picked up win No. 223.
Montana (22-9) enters the conference tournament as the No. 2 seed behind Northern Colorado — the program they share the league title with — and the Grizzlies know well there is still plenty left to accomplish and work for to achieve their ultimate goals. UM takes on the winner of EWU-Northern Arizona on Sunday at 8 p.m. at Idaho Central Arena in Boise, Idaho.
"We’re on a mission," DeCuire said. "We're not the healthiest team in conference right now and we got to get our bodies right, so I think some time off will be good for us for a couple days, and then regroup towards the end of the week. These guys deserve to enjoy it for a day or two. And get healthy and then we'll get back to it. But for now, bask in it."
"Enjoy it now. Big key is just we can't get complacent," Whitney said. "Just because we won, we know that we have three more games to go. And we got to make sure everybody knows that."
