PORTLAND, Ore. — Montana State Billings' Cassie Chesnut, Layla Baumann and Rae Smart were named to the preseason All-Great Northwest Athletic Conference women's basketball team Thursday.
Former Montana Lady Griz player Libby Stump, now at Western Washington, was tabbed GNAC preseason MVP. Alaska Anchorage's Kyla Momberg, a Box Elder product formerly of MSU Billings, was also selected preseason All-GNAC.
Chesnut, a 6-foot-2 sophomore forward, was unstoppable at last year’s GNAC championships tournament, averaging 21.7 points, 9.3 rebounds, 2.7 blocks, 1.3 assists and 1.0 steals per game. The obvious choice for GNAC Championships MVP, Chesnut was the x-factor in helping the Yellowjackets become the first-ever team to win the tournament as the No. 6 seed.
The headline performance came after a regular season that earned her GNAC Freshman of the Year honors, as she ranked fourth in the conference with 8.6 rebounds per game and 10th in the league with 13.6 points per game. Chesnut delivered 10 double-doubles in her collegiate debut season.
A year plagued with injuries kept Baumann off the floor in 2025-26, but she returns to the Yellowjacket lineup as a senior leader this season. Across two campaigns at her hometown school, Baumann has played in 53 games and posted an average of 4.5 points per game.
Baumann, a Billings West alum, played in 21 games as a true freshman in 2023-24, contributing to the Yellowjackets’ second GNAC regular-season title in program history.
Chesnut wasn’t the only true freshman who turned heads at last year’s conference tournament, as Smart also garnered all-tournament recognition with a memorable performance. She opened the event with a 14-point, 13-rebound double-double in MSUB’s upset of Central Washington, and reached double digits in points in all three conference tournament games.
That came amid a debut season in which Smart, a Billings Skyview grad, averaged 7.4 points, 5.3 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game. She posted a pair of double-doubles, including a monster game of 25 points and 17 boards against Alaska Anchorage on Jan. 24.
In her second season with the Vikings, Stump helped orchestrate a GNAC-title winning team as WWU went 15-3 in league play to capture its third crown in the last five years. Stump ranked seventh in the conference last year in scoring at 14.2 points per game, on her way to earning a spot on the All-GNAC first team.
After injuries limited her to just 11 games in her WWU debut in 2024-25, Stump started all 33 contests for the Vikings last winter and helped them reach the GNAC championships title game and the second round of the NCAA West Region championships. One of Stump’s signature efforts was a 21-point outburst on March 13 that led the Vikings past Point Loma 74-60 at the NCAA regionals.
Overall Stump reached 20 points in a game eight times including a career-high 33 points on Nov. 1 against Minot State. In addition to her productive scoring, Stump led the GNAC with 4.3 assists per game and contributed 3.7 rebounds per game for the Vikings.
An intra-conference transfer, Momberg is set to make her debut at Alaska Anchorage after spending the 2025-26 campaign on the Montana State Billings roster. Momberg played an instrumental role in helping deliver the Yellowjackets’ second GNAC championship title, and earned honorable mention all-conference last year.
Momberg averaged 9.2 points per game and reached a season high of 26 against the Seawolves on Jan. 24. Perhaps her most comprehensive performance of the year came in the Yellowjackets’ GNAC Championships semifinal win over Central Washington, where she had 11 points, nine assists, seven rebounds and five steals.
