Montana
Griz survive cold shooting for 69-66 win – University of Montana Athletics
Brandon Whitney drove down the lane and finished nearly uncontested, cutting the Trailblazer lead to one point with 13 seconds remaining. On the ensuing inbound, Whitney and Amari Jedkins trapped Utah Tech in the backcourt. They passed out of the double-team, but Johnson was there to intercept and cut to the hoop.
The guard finished through contact to make it 67-66 Montana, the first lead for the Grizzlies in 14 minutes. He missed the free throw, but was able to track down his own rebound and was fouled again. This time, Johnson made both at the line to make it 69-66. A desperation attempt from Utah Tech was off, and Montana survived.
The Grizzlies (4-3) only needed the dramatic comeback after a tough shooting stretch disintegrated a double-digit lead and allowed Utah Tech to pull back into the game. Montana went 8:09 without a made field goal, going scoreless the final 6:37 of the first half.
After making 13 of their first 19 shots (.684), Montana went 2-of-22 for an over 15 minute stretch of the game. But when things got tough, they responded with seven makes on their final eight attempts to come from behind.
“You have to take ugly wins when you can get them,” head coach Travis DeCuire said. “I do think they build character when you have tough games and you have to come from behind, you have a lead for most of the game, but we just really had a hard time getting the lid off the hoop. I thought we were on pace to score 50 in the first half and then we didn’t score a basket in the last six minutes, and we never really snapped out of it. That was a tough one, but I’ll take it.”
CHAOS IN MISSOULA! KAI WITH THE STEAL AND SCORE AND THE GRIZ LEAD!! pic.twitter.com/Kx3KVYEHUA
— Montana Griz Basketball (@MontanaGrizBB) November 26, 2024
Brandon Whitney and Kai Johnson, the two players involved in the late scoring, were the leaders for Montana on the night with 16 points apiece. They were the only Grizzlies in double figures as Montana shot 43 percent from the floor and just 20 percent from three-point range.
Johnson scored nine of his points in the second half, five of which came from the free throw line. He also recovered two of his own missed free throws, hustling for every ball. His steal to win the game was his third of the day.
Whitney started the game strong, and ended it in the same fashion, taking over down the stretch with the offense struggling. He got to the rim three times in the final three minutes to score six of his 16 in the closing moments.
“We wanted to get Whitney to the rim, and that’s really what we were doing down the stretch. The last couple baskets we scored, we knew they would probably go with their halfcourt trap to zone but I felt that if we got in transition quick off the make or miss they would have a hard time setting it up, which ended up working out.”
You couldn’t have drawn up a much better start for the Griz. They made their first three shot attempts, and after a three-pointer from Austin Patterson with 12:25 left in the first half had a 25-14 lead. At that point, Montana had made 9-of-11 field goal attempts. They hit a brief cold patch, but recovered with four of their next five. Jedkins gave them a 38-28 lead with 6:37 to play in the first half.
The Griz were shooting nearly 70 percent from the floor at the time, and were scoring nearly 3.0 points per minute. They were on pace to score well over 100 points for the game, and had nine different players in the scoring column.
“The ball was moving. I think that our intent was different,” DeCuire said of the hot start. “I think that we thought we needed to generate offense for one another and the ball needed to move and we needed to be patient, but we were scoring pretty quickly and pretty easily. And then I think we thought it was going to be like that the whole game.”
As Montana settled in, Utah Tech ramped up the effort defensively. Montana missed eight straight shots and also committed four turnover in the final six minutes. They still led 38-34 at the halftime break.
Coming out of the break, it was much of the same. The Griz missed their first two attempts before Money Williams finally stopped the scoring drought on a lay-up with 18:28 to play. But the Griz would go on to miss 10 of their next 11 shots with Williams scoring again during the stretch. Outside of the two makes from him, the Grizzlies misconnected on 20 straight shots.
Utah Tech was able to build a four-point lead as a result. Joe Pridgen got things going in the final 10 minutes, scoring seven of his nine points during that stretch.
Montana’s defense also helped keep it in the game. The Griz held Utah Tech to just 21 percent shooting from the three-point line and scored 12 points off Trailblazer turnovers. During the cold stretch for the hosts, the Griz defense was able to hold Utah Tech to just 1-of-10 shooting during a stretch. It kept Montana in position to make the comeback late.
The largest lead for the Trailblazers was five points, and Pridgen cut that down to one with back-to-back layups to make it 53-52. Utah Tech maintained a 2-4 point advantage for the closing six minutes before chaos broke loos in the final 60 seconds.
Tennessee Rainwater made a layup to give Utah Tech a 65-61 lead with 56 seconds to play. Johnson was then fouled, and made his first but missed the second. Johnson tracked down his own board, and was fouled again. He once again made 1-of-2, cutting the lead to 65-63 with 48 seconds left.
Montana elected not to foul, and played out nearly the whole shot clock before committing a shooting foul at the rim with 20 seconds left. Samuel Ariyibi made 1-of-2 free throws to give Utah Tech the 66-63 lead.
And then, some magic for Montana. Whitney scored on the drive, helped force the turnover, and Johnson put it away at the line. Six points. 13 seconds. Griz win.
“They’ve got two dominant ball handlers, and we wanted to take both away, so I thought putting Whitney on the ball because he’s good at reading and taking away the first cutter,” DeCuire said of the final play. “I thought when he took the ball handler away on the first cut, Malik did the job on the second cut, and Kai jumped the lane when they got close to the five count. That’s what happens when you get close to the five count, you kind of panic and just try to get the ball out of your hands and Kai was able to make a play.”
Montana won the rebounding category 39-33 and had an 18-6 advantage at the free throw line in terms of makes. They also did well in transition, scoring 13 fast break points. But overall, it was a night that many Griz players would like to have back.
But on the second day of a back-to-back, these are the types of games that you want to win to build some character for the rest of the season.
“It’s huge. You don’t want these games going in, but when you look back over the course of 10, 15, 20 games, you want to look back and say we’ve had a couple of challenges that we’ve survived and we conquered and this is one of them,” DeCuire said.
The head coach improves to 50-6 in home non-conference games, 4-0 this season. His team will certainly need to make improvements on Wednesday when they host CSUN in the championship game of the Stew Morrill Classic.
CSUN defeated Denver 89-60 in the first game on Monday afternoon. The Matadors led nearly the entire game, making 33 free throws in the contest. They have several athletic players that got to the rim at will against Denver, and it led to a .519 field goal percentage.
“We’ve got to keep them out of the paint. They have three or four guys that are really good at getting into the paint and finishing, they are good at sharing the ball around the basket,” DeCuire said. “They only made two threes today but put 89 on the board, so they find a way to get to the free throw line and we need to keep them off the line and out of the paint.”
WASHINGTON ― Montana Republican Senate nominee Kurt Alme, who previously served as his state’s U.S. attorney, cut a plea deal in 2020 that allowed a tribal police officer who sexually abused a 6-year-old girl to serve less than a year in prison and avoid being registered as a sex offender.
Alme, who has President Donald Trump’s backing in his bid for Senate, served as Montana’s U.S. attorney in two stints. Trump appointed him both times; Alme served in the role from September 2017 through December 2020, and then again from March 2025 through March 2026.
Alme oversaw the case of Mychal Thomas Damon, who was indicted in June 2019 by a grand jury on one count of abusive sexual contact with an individual under 12, which carries a maximum punishment of a lifetime in prison, a $250,000 fine and no less than five years to a lifetime of supervised release. The average sentence for this crime is less severe, but still significant: 62 months in prison, no fine and 143 months of supervised release, based on an analysis of 2025 data provided by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Damon, 28, had admitted he touched the 6-year-old’s genitals. But in February 2020, Alme’s office filed a plea deal in his case that reduced his charge to felony child abuse.
The changes in the plea deal raised the alleged age of the victim from below 12 to below 14, stripped out the language of sexual intent and moved the offense out of the federal sex crime framework, meaning Damon would no longer be required to register as a sex offender. It jointly recommended Damon be sentenced to the time he’d already served of 324 days, and required only a sex offender evaluation. Alme’s name appears on the bottom of the document, along with a signature by his assistant U.S. attorney, Cassady Adams.
In June, Alme filed a sentencing memorandum that described Damon’s conduct, which included details of him touching the child’s vagina with skin-to-skin contact, and the adverse effect it had on her mental health. Local reporting at the time said the victim had told a therapist “Mychal touched me” and hurt her by putting his fingers in her “hoo hoo.”
Ten days later, Alme announced Damon was being sentenced to time served of 324 days and two years of supervised release. As of June 2026, Damon is not listed in the national sex offender registry or in Montana’s Sexual or Violent Offender Registry.
It’s not clear why Alme reduced the charges against Damon as significantly as he did. During part of his tenure as U.S. attorney, his office declined 64% of sexual assault cases. He conceded in a 2019 interview that this “is something that has to be worked on,” and noted that a lot of these cases are declined due to “weak or insufficient evidence.”
Asked what happened in Damon’s case, an Alme campaign spokesman on Thursday lashed out at unnamed Democrats for trying to make him look bad.
“Kurt’s liberal opponents are twisting the facts to manufacture a fake narrative that exploits crimes against women and children,” said Alme’s spokesperson. “Department of Justice policy required defendants to plead to the most serious charge readily provable from the evidence. Kurt strongly supported the Multi-Disciplinary Teams on our Native American reservations, led by his office, to support investigations of crimes against children and to support victims.”
His spokesperson also pushed back on the idea that Alme unreasonably declined a large number of sexual assault cases during his tenure as U.S. attorney.
“Kurt’s office prosecuted every viable sexual abuse felony referred to it and pursued the most serious charge readily provable from the evidence,” the spokesperson said. “Many ‘declined’ cases were to allow more appropriate tribal prosecutions ― they were not dropped. Kurt will bring his years of experience prosecuting criminals and working with the Sexual Assault Response Teams on our Native American reservations to the U.S. Senate to strengthen investigations, support victims, and better protect women and children.”
The campaign pointed HuffPost to a 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office that found the most common reason for U.S. attorney’s offices to decline sexual abuse cases referred in from Indian country was “weak or insufficient admissible evidence.” It also highlighted statements of support for Alme in an October 2025 press release by Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), when he celebrated Alme being confirmed as U.S. attorney.
Alme is currently running for Daines’ Senate seat, and Daines went out of his way to clear the path for him. In a stunning and orchestrated maneuver, the two-term senator in March abruptly withdrew from reelection as Alme filed to run for his seat, minutes before the state’s filing period closed. Daines’ last-minute change-up was an effort to block potential Democrats or any major Republican challenger from jumping into an open Senate race.
Alme is taking on Democrat Alani Bankhead and independent candidate Seth Bodnar in the November election. Bankhead and Bodner have been duking it out for weeks, with each appealing to different factions of the Democratic party and calling on the other to drop out.
Bankhead, a retired Air Force officer, unexpectedly won the Democratic primary earlier this month, boosted by grassroots supporters and more than $2.5 million in outside money from a progressive veterans’ PAC. But Bodnar, a former University of Montana president who did not appear on the primary ballot, has bipartisan endorsements from prominent establishment figures, including former Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and former Republican Gov. Marc Racicot. He’s also significantly outraised Bankhead and Alme.
This Senate seat is rated “solid Republican” by the nonpartisan Cook’s Political Report, meaning Alme is well-positioned to win the general election. But this race would be more competitive if Bodner and Alme were going head to head, without Bankhead in the running.
Where Khloe Kardashian Stands With Ex French Montana More Than 10 Years After Breakup
French Montana is done keeping up with reality TV.
In fact, he only agreed to appear on Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Kourtney & Khloé Take the Hamptons over a decade ago as a favor to then-girlfriend Khloe Kardashian.
“She said to get on the show,” he exclusively told E! News at the BET Awards on June 28. “And I got on the show. Shout out to Khloe.”
The “Ever Since U Left Me” rapper, who split with Kardashian in December 2014 after eight months of dating, said the experience was “fun” because her family kept it real.
“They filmed their real life,” he continued. “And we were part of something together that one time. So it felt great. It didn’t feel like work because they film what they do everyday.”
As for his future in reality TV, the 41-year-old said those days are over, shutting down any prospective offers with a simple, “Negative.”
Although the “Unforgettable” artist—whose real name is Karim Kharbouch—may not be returning to television anytime soon, he has no problem hanging out with his ex-girlfriend these days.
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