BOULDER, Colo. — Taylee Chirrick’s driving layup with 1.7 seconds left lifted Montana State to a 71-70 women’s basketball victory on the road over Colorado of the Big 12 on Sunday.

With seconds ticking away and MSU trailing 70-69, Chirrick beat two defenders along the near sideline and broke toward the basket to lay in the go-ahead points. A last-ditch heave by the Buffaloes missed, and the Bobcats improved to 5-1 overall.

“This team showed championship toughness and grittiness in the second half,” MSU coach Tricia Binford stated in a press release. “They fought and clawed their way back against a very good team. I’m very proud of everyone’s effort.”

Colorado’s Desiree Wooten gave her team the lead with nine seconds left with a driving three-point play. But Chirrick and Montana State were able to complete a comeback that saw the Bobcats erase a 12-point lead in the fourth quarter.

A layup by CU’s Anaelle Dutat had the Bobcats down 61-49 with 9:24 remaining; the Cats closed the game on a 22-9 run.

Chirrick, a sophomore from Roberts, finished with a game-high 21 points. She made 6 of 15 from the floor and went 7 for 7 from the foul line. Addison Harris added 19 points, and Heidi Smith scored eight of her 10 in the fourth quarter to boost the Bobcats’ rally.

Harris and Chirrick led MSU with six rebounds apiece. Chirrick also had three assists and four steals. The Bobcats scored 20 points off 23 Colorado turnovers.

Jade Masogayo led the Buffaloes with 16 points while Wooten had 14. Dutat finished with 10 points and a game-best nine rebounds.

Montana State will next travel to Fargo, N.D., to face North Dakota State on Wednesday as part of the Big Sky/Summit League Challenge. The Bobcats will host North Dakota on Saturday.

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Email Daniel Shepard at daniel.shepard@406mtsports.com and find him on X/Twitter @IR_DanielS.

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Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a libertarian special interest group, would have you think so. And it is sending out postcards and online ads claiming that Republicans who worked with Governor Greg Gianforte to produce a balanced budget are “pouring gasoline on the fire.”

The problem is that the “accountability information” AFP is peddling is false.

Did the state budget “explode” by $16.5 billion? NO! That number is the two-year appropriation in the General Appropriations Act (HB 2). It is not how much the budget increased. The actual increase in the total state budget was $142 million over two years—a tiny fraction of the amount claimed by AFP—according to the official budget comparison as calculated per state law (17-7-151, MCA) and validated by analysts at the legislature’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Division. Was there a 13.5% increase in state spending? NO! AFP’s number comes from considering only part of the state budget. The total state budget grew by only 0.7%, according to the official budget comparison cited above.

Did the budget grow at “2x the rate of inflation and 7x the pace of population growth”?  NO! Budget growth was 0.7%—obviously much less than what AFP claims.

Is Montana running “massive deficits”? NO!  he state constitution requires a balanced budget, and the budget we passed is balanced. Montana does not engage in deficit spending. Furthermore, Montana is the only bond debt-free state in the nation because of legislative actions taken over the past two sessions.

Was this the “biggest budget in Montana’s history”? Yes. But that could be said about any year in at least the recent past (I looked back 10 years). Why is that? A big reason is that inflation drives up the cost of providing the services that most Montanans expect, e.g., law enforcement, a corrections system, mental health and drug treatment, an education system, and management of our public lands, to name only a few. Good government is about providing those services as cost effectively as possible. Governor Gianforte and his allies in the legislature have been doing just that.

Americans for Prosperity might be forgiven if they simply misunderstood a thing or two about state finance. But AFP got so much wrong that one can only conclude that it willfully distorted the truth in order to mislead Montana citizens. Where I come from in Montana that’s called lying.

David Bedey is a Republican state Representative from Hamilton.