Wednesday’s loss, a 70-69 defeat at the hands of now 5-0 BYU, will keep first-year Lady Griz coach Nate Harris up into the wee hours, but when he wakes up on Thursday morning, he’ll likely do so with a noticeable hop in his step.
 
Showing a heightened tenacity on the defensive end and a depth of 3-point shooting that will create problems for every opponent Montana faces this season, Harris’s Lady Griz had the Cougars right where they wanted them in the closing minutes at Dahlberg Arena.
 
Montana led 69-64 with just over three minutes remaining but BYU made the winning plays down the stretch, a pull-up jumper in the lane, a 3-pointer with 2:03 that tied it and a game-winning free throw with 1:13 left that proved to be the final point of the game.
 
After the teams traded possessions in the final minute, Montana had the ball, down one, the shot clock turned off and shooters that had made 14 3-pointers on the night spaced around the arc.
 
But potential 3-pointer No. 15 was off the mark and the buzzer sounded before anyone could do anything with the rebound. It was a hard-to-take result on a night that left fans looking at the months ahead and thinking, okay, this team could be really good.
 
“A step in the right direction,” said an understandably disappointed Harris after the game. “I told the team, the easy thing to do is to focus on the result, which I’ll try my hardest not to do as well.
 
“We had a Big 12 team on the ropes and had some great looks down the stretch. Did enough defensively. Really disappointed for our kids. I felt like this could have been a great opportunity to taste victory.”
 
It was a match-up that was hard to make heads or tails of before tip, BYU racing out to a 4-0 start to the season, all the wins coming at home against a lineup of mid- to low-packers, Montana opening 1-3 but facing a brutal stretch of games against Oregon, Washington and South Dakota State.
 
BYU’s largest lead on Wednesday was seven, in the opening period. Montana’s was five, in the final period. In between was Montana’s 3-point shooting going back and forth with BYU’s stronger inside presence in a game full of drama and emotion. November basketball at its best.
 
Playing without last season’s Big 12 Freshman of the Year and this year’s leading scorer, Delaney Gibb, BYU still looked like it might run away with the game in the first quarter, getting out to leads of 16-9 and 18-11.
 
That’s when Montana seemed to draw a line in the sand, its on-ball defense, in particular, going from being there to straight-up disruptive.
 
The Lady Griz scored 10 points over the final 2:40 of the first quarter, highlighted by back-to-back 3-pointers from freshman Rae Ehrman, and ended the period down just one, 20-19.
 
BYU would not shoot as well in any of the final three periods as the Cougars did in the first.
 
“We need to focus on the growth and what we got out of today, which was learning that when you guard, good things happen,” said Harris.
 
“I thought we guarded with a lot more intensity than we’ve shown all year. Were there mistakes? Sure, but I thought the effort and the intensity were there in a big way.”
 
The Cougars led 38-34 at the half, 55-54 after three quarters, setting up the dramatic final period.
 
Had Montana won, the hero would have been Mack Konig, who was special even without the W. She scored 19 points and added four assists, scoring six in the fourth quarter on strong drives through the gaping holes in the Cougar defense, Harris’s game plan for his program coming to life in real time.
 
A Macy Donarski 3-pointer gave Montana a 62-59 lead and an advantage it would hold for more than five minutes, a Konig finish at the basket making it 64-61, an Ehrman three making it 67-62, another Konig left-handed finish at the rim making it 69-64.
 
There were only three-some minutes to go and BYU had no answer for Montana’s spread offense. But Konig’s basket at 3:37 would be the final points of the game for the Lady Griz.
 
Marya Hudgins, who scored a game-high 23 points, breathed life into the Cougars when her pull-up made it a three-point game, 69-66.
 
The game flipped in a span of nine seconds, a Montana three from the corner missing with 2:12 to go and BYU hitting its own corner three with 2:03 left that tied it. What could have been a six-point lead was now a game deadlocked.
 
Neither team would score a basket the rest of the way, a free throw by Hudgins with 73 seconds left the final point.
 
After taking possession with 20 seconds left, Konig played the clock down to 10 seconds before initiating what Montana hoped was the game-winning sequence.
 
She drove, kicked it to Donarski, who drove and passed back to Konig, who got the ball of Jocelyn Land just to the side of the top of the key, the player who made eight threes on Saturday against South Dakota State.
 
It was an open but contested look, Hudgins doing her best to disrupt Land’s focus with a no-foul fly-by. The stroke was pure, the shot a bit to the right. Ball game. Heartbreak.
 
“We were right there with a fantastic look that I’d take 10 times out of 10 to win the game,” said Harris. “We have to keep plugging. We cannot let the results slow down or stunt the growth that we made tonight.”
 
Montana had its best offensive balance of the season, with Konig finishing with 19, her fifth time this season with 11 or more points, Ehrman adding 12 off the bench on four 3-pointers, and Waddington scoring 10 points, matching a career high with 13 rebounds and blocking a career-high four shots.
 
Donarski scored eight, Kennedy Gillette eight off the bench, Land six.
 
Montana has now made 13, 16 and 14 3-pointers the last three games on better-than-solid 36.4 percent shooting from the arc. The Lady Griz entered the night one of 15 teams in the nation averaging 10 or more threes made, a number that will only tick up after Wednesday.
 
Montana will go Big Ten to Big Ten to the nation’s top-ranked mid-major team to Big 12 to Big 12 when the Lady Griz host Utah (3-1) on Saturday, Nov. 29.