Doubleheader homecoming victories fuel Montana Tech hoops

Now, with a 80-67 victory over Montana Western on Thursday night and one game left in the regular season Saturday against Providence (19-7, 9-5 Frontier), Graham and his Orediggers look to continue proving their doubters wrong.

“It definitely fuels us,” Liv Wangerin, who finished with a team-high 23 points, told 406 MT Sports of the Orediggers’ underdog narrative this season. “And our coaches remind us, ‘You know, you were picked last. Get it in gear.’”

It was a slow start to the game against Western, with both teams struggling to find a comfortable pace. While the Bulldogs worked well defensively, getting 23 rebounds in the first half to the Orediggers’ 17, Tech’s offense was turned up to a higher notch with a 48% field goal percentage to Western’s 28.6%.

Tech then went on an eight-point streak in the second quarter, holding Western to eight points in the Orediggers’ 15, and pulled away to a lead as large as 14 points in the third. The Bulldogs never got any closer to the Orediggers than that for the rest of the game.

Tech defended well (13 steals, five blocks), were aggressive in the paint, racking up 28 points and 44 rebounds, and were 23-for-31 at the free point line. The wealth on the court was shared too, as 11 players scored for Tech. Besides Wangerin’s 23 points, she was also 7-for-8 at the free throw line. Aubrie Rademacher had 14 points, Kia Wasson had 11 and was 3-for-3 at the three, and Macy Mayer and Hadley Humphreys shared the team high in rebounds with seven. And all in all, Tech’s bench scored 28 points to improve its home record to 11-2.

Just as has been the case all season, you never know who is going to step up for the Orediggers. In the case of tonight, it was 11 players who did.

“They bought in, they’re unselfish, they play hard, they defend,” Graham said. “They’ve established that winning mentality.”

That winning mentality helped chiseled by the chip on their shoulder has fueled the Tech women all season and will carry them through to the end of the regular season as they prepare to face Providence on Saturday night.

The last game of the regular season – and the two teams battling for the No. 2 seed heading into the Frontier Conference tournament will be the team voted last in preseason polling and the team voted first in Providence.

“It would be a good ending,” Wangerin said. “It would be cool if we get that win, because they were number one and we were last, so just kind of flip that role.”

A narrative has existed all season for the Montana Tech men, too: aspirations of a four-peat.

And with four straight losses on the tail end of the regular season, all of them on the road, those four-peat aspirations nipped a little bit harder.

But the return to home court and an 80-61 victory against the Bulldogs in the penultimate game of the regular season is exactly what the Oredigger men (21-6, 9-5 Frontier) needed as they gear up for the Frontier Conference tournament.

The Tech men have had bad breaks go against them this season: injuries, illness, close games. Basically everything that you could imagine that could turn against a team, coach Adam Hiatt said.

So the focus of the team ahead of this week at home, the last week of the regular season, was getting back to those roots and becoming that championship-caliber team despite the setbacks.

“You got two directions you can go as a coach,” Hiatt said. “You can just hammer your guys down even more and just get in their face and just really parade them every single day for losing these games.

“Or you can take the flip side and really focus on, ‘Okay, where are we really?’”

Things looked a little shaky heading into halftime as Tech had the slight edge over Western 30-26. What became the real difference maker for the Orediggers came in the middle of the second period off of four-straight three-pointers: three from Keeley Bake and one from Levi Torgerson.

After that, the gap only widened as Tech pulled away to improve to 62.5% of field goal percentage, 5-for-10 at the three, and 15-for-20 at the free throw line compared to Western’s 37.9% field goal percentage, 4-for-10 at the three, and 9-for-12 at the free throw line.

As the Tech men battle through all the obstacles that are a given for any athletic program, they flexed their muscle tonight and showed why they are still a force to be reckoned with.

“We just need to focus on what we have right now, what we have available, and what we can do with what we have,” Hiatt said. “And our guys can defend, they can rebound, and we can make smart plays. And we did that tonight.”

Indeed, as Hayden Diekhans led the Orediggers in points with 25, as well as rebounds with 11. Bake and Michael Ure each notched 17 points, with Bake going 4-for-7 at the three and 5-for-5 at the free throw line and Ure going 10-for-11 at the free throw line.

Now, Tech will focus on its next and final regular-season game against Providence (15-12, 9-5 Frontier) as the Orediggers and Argos battle for the outright regular-season championship crown. Only after Tech takes care of Providence will Hiatt and his squad be able to shift their focus to the Frontier Conference tournament.

“Our entire attention is on the Saturday game. Nothing else matters more than that,” Hiatt said. “I can’t even tell you what the schedule is for the conference tournament because Saturday is the biggest game of the year for us.

“We have a lot on the line, and we’re going to go out there and give it our best.”