It wasn’t easy or pretty, but
Kai Johnson’s steal-and-score with six seconds remaining gave Montana a gritty 69-66 win over Utah Tech on Monday night. The Griz trailed by three with 20 seconds to play, and proceeded to score six points in the final 13 seconds of the contest to improve to 4-0 at home this season.
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.”
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.”
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