Copyright @ 1998 by The University of Montana

by Rick Stern

As the 1997-98 Montana men’s and women’s basketball seasons settle into the memories of the Grizzly faithful, the story of the off-season focuses on two Montana coaches - men’s head coach Blaine Taylor and women’s head coach Robin Selvig - whose careers are taking vastly different turns.

Taylor - who grew up in Missoula and played and coached for The University of Montana basketball program - is looking forward to his next season of coaching, but he’ll be working with the Stanford Cardinal, not the Montana Grizzlies. After seven successful seasons on the sidelines for the Griz, Taylor accepted an assistant coaching position at Stanford, where he’ll rejoin Mike Montgomery. Taylor played for Montgomery and was his assistant during the latter’s tenure as the Grizzlies’ head coach from 1979-86. Taylor will be replaced next year by his assistant, Don Holst.

“There’s nobody that has a higher regard for Montana than me, but once they got me down to Stanford, I was just overwhelmed,” Taylor said. “The biggest obstacle was that I’ve got very deep roots here.”

Selvig completed his twentieth season at the helm of the Lady Griz by guiding them through their seventh consecutive twenty-win season and their thirteenth appearance in the NCAA Tournament. After leading his teams to the most wins of any coach in Montana history, Selvig seems to be sinking his roots ever deeper into the Missoula soil.

“I can’t imagine not coaching, so if I can last another twenty years, I’ll do it,” Selvig said. “I’m kind of a day-to-day guy. I don’t think about things down the road too much. I’m just excited about next year’s team.”

UM’s Glass Ceiling

Freshman Jared Buckmaster, one of several promising young Grizzlies.

The Grizzlies have won three Big Sky Conference championships in Taylor’s seven years, and the Lady Griz have won Big Sky championships thirteen times under Selvig. Yet the Montana athletics program is hampered by a “glass ceiling” that severely limits the teams’ ability to compete with larger, better-endowed schools across the nation.

Several factors contribute to this glass ceiling effect. Because they reside in an isolated area, Montana teams have a limited population to draw upon for fan support. They compete in a conference - the Big Sky - which rarely receives much national attention. And the athletics department has a limited budget compared with those of bigger schools that have more sophisticated training facilities and larger, more glamourous playing arenas.

“We have some limitations, which affect what sorts of kids we can recruit,” Selvig said. “But we’ve got a lot of good things going, and you don’t want to start thinking that’s not enough, because it’s a lot.”

Taylor wants to win a national championship. “Quite honestly, the dream is to get to the NCAA tournament. It’s difficult to go beyond that,” said Taylor, who joins a Stanford team that will return all five starters after finishing as one of the final four teams in the 1998 NCAA tournament.

The 1997-98 Grizzlies:
A Restructuring Year

In comparison, the Grizzlies finished 16-14 overall and lost to Montana State in the first round of the Big Sky Conference Tournament.

“This season might not have been the shiniest penny, but it was a keepsake,” said Taylor of the 1998 Grizzlies. “We had only one senior and were coming off of four straight twenty-win seasons. It was a little bit of a restructuring year. There was quite a bit to be proud of when it was all said and done.”

Taylor was most proud of the Grizzlies’ 7-1 record at home in Big Sky Conference games, including the 73-66 victory over Northern Arizona on February 7 and a 72-66 win over Montana State that closed out the regular season on February 28.

Junior Megan Harrington will step into Skyla Sisco’s old spot as Lady Griz point guard.

As his Montana career came to a close, Taylor had nothing to say but kind words about the people he’s worked with. “I am a product of Montana,” said Taylor. “I would love to share how much gratitude I have because I have just led such a blessed existence from being born out on Seventh Street - the fifth of seven kids, dad worked out at the pulp mill - to getting an opportunity to rise up and be the head coach here. There are so many people to thank, the list is endless.”

The 1997-98 Lady Griz:
A Stellar Season

When his UM career winds down, Robin Selvig also will have chalked up a list of thank-yous. But after steering the Lady Griz through another spectacular season, it doesn’t appear Selvig will be licking those stamps any time soon.

One person Selvig is grateful to is Skyla Sisco, the Malta native who led this year’s Lady Griz to her fourth NCAA tournament. Thanks to her gritty leadership as a point guard - and to Selvig’s tutelage - Sisco guided the Lady Griz through another stellar season. They finished 24-6 and earned the right to face Florida in the NCAA tournament.

“We had some big questions coming into the season, in particular, how were we going to replace Greta [Koss], who did so much for our team,” Selvig said. “I felt good about the kids we had coming back. This team ended up being a really strong basketball club by the end of the year, and I thought we had a chance to do some good in the NCAA. It turned out we had a tough draw and ran into a buzz saw.”

That piece of power machinery was a Florida team that hadn’t lost at home. The Lady Gators simply overpowered the Lady Griz 85-64 during their first-round matchup in the NCAA tournament in Gainesville on March 14.

“Florida just out-quicked us and had a lot more talent,” said senior center Angella Bieber, who, like Sisco, ended her Lady Griz career with that defeat. “I think we would have had to have a near-perfect night to beat them or even to make it a close game. I was upset, but not as bad as I would be if we had lost by two points.”

This season the Lady Griz finished 15-1 in the Big Sky Conference, losing only to Northern Arizona 73-64 on January 8 in Missoula. Montana avenged that loss with a 85-75 victory over NAU on February 7 in Flagstaff. A month later, the two teams met again in the finals of the Big Sky Conference tournament in Missoula, with the Lady Griz winning 58-48.

That victory earned Selvig his thirteenth trip to the NCAA tournament and capped another season that had him - like most coaches who’ve had success at small schools - once again answering questions about his ambitions.

“My expectations are that the kids go out and play as hard as they can, and I don’t think we’ve lost any NCAA games because we didn’t do that,” said Selvig, whose teams have won a respectable six games in the NCAA tournament while losing thirteen. “If I want to go to the Final Four as a coach, realistically I’d probably start looking at a different job. But this is the program I’d like to take, and who knows what might happen.” M


Rick Stern works at the Missoula Urban Demonstration Project.