Montana men come from 11 down to beat North Dakota on the road

GRAND FORKS, N.D. — There was practically nothing ordinary about Montana men’s basketball’s game Saturday night. The Grizzlies had travel delays getting there, a changed game time, a power outage during shootaround, and a last-minute pregame meal. 
 
Montana also faced an 11-point deficit on the road inside of 10 minutes to play, stacking yet another obstacle in the way of head coach Travis DeCuire’s team. 
 
The Grizzlies overcame them all, going on a 17-2 run in the second half to come from behind and win 80-71 over the North Dakota Fighting Hawks. The win improves Montana to 2-2 on the year. 
 
“We always say we take wins how we can get them, especially on the road under the circumstances that we’ve been under for the last 24-to-48 hours,” head coach Travis DeCuire said. “We had some guys that hadn’t really been playing a lot step up and make big plays and found a group that can play on both sides tonight and kind of rolled with them down the stretch.”
 
Jordan Clark had a huge performance on the offensive end with 27 points on 7-of-10 shooting. He scored 17 of his points in the second half with three made 3-pointers to help lead the Grizzly comeback. 
 
The offense got hot with 47 second half points, but it was the rebounding and defense that helped Montana to the victory. The Grizzlies outrebounded the Fighting Hawks 43-25 on the night with 14 offensive boards that led to 13 second chance points. 
 
DeCuire made a lineup change in the second half that allowed Montana to defend well and continue to hold the advantage on the glass.
 
“That has been our Achilles’ heel the last couple of years and really it’s because our perimeter hasn’t done a good job,” DeCuire said of the rebounding effort. “We had some four guard lineups out there that were getting those balls and when you can limit a team’s second chance shots, you have a good shot to win.”
 
Montana had a 10-0 run in the first half to take an early lead, but North Dakota went back in front at 18-16 with 11 minutes left in the first half and led all the way to the break. Clark didn’t score in the first 17 minutes of the game but started his barrage of baskets late in the first. 
 
Clark hit back-to-back threes to cut the lead to 32-31. North Dakota answered with a pair of triples of their own to take the biggest lead of the half at 38-31, but Clark hit two free throws with a second left in the half to cut the lead to five at the break. 
 
In the second half, Clark caught fire. He hit leaning three pointers, step-back jumpers, and got to the free throw line time and time again on his way to the 27-point night. He had the green light, but the rest of his teammates did well to find him looks. 
 
“Hats off to the man that makes the shot, somebody has to do that,” DeCuire said. “I thought the guys did a good job of finding him. Tyler Thompson and Garret Dutro had made some shots and they both conceded in the moment to the guy that was the hot hand. We talk about consideration all the time, and that’s the first time this year we have executed it as a team without needing a timeout or a conversation from the staff to do it. It’s a great sign in terms of where we are and where we’re headed.”
 
The Griz trailed 58-47 with less than 10 minutes remaining in the game. After everything that had happened in the travel and delays, you would almost expect Montana to have thrown in the towel. 
 
Instead, they started a rally. They scored seven straight points to cut the lead to four. North Dakota got its only basket over a six-minute stretch on a layup with seven minutes to go. After an 8-of-18 first half from the 3-point line for North Dakota, DeCuire switched his defense to take away catch-and-shoot three pointers. The move paid off.
 
North Dakota made just four 3-pointers in the second half and scored just 33 points after the break.
 
“We went to a bigger lineup so we could put a post player, Amari Jedkins, on the point guard so we could switch with the post. That shut down the penetration,” DeCuire said. “We made some stuff up, we drew in the sand a little bit down the stretch and found something that worked and road it out.”
 
After the North Dakota layup, the Griz went on a 7-0 run with five points from Clark to take the lead at 64-60. They would hold it the rest of the way with Clark, Thompson, and Dutro leading the offense across the finish line. 
 
Montana went 20-of-28 from the free throw line while holding North Dakota to just 13 attempts at the stripe. 
 
“Another key for us was to keep them off the free throw line,” DeCuire said. “I think that’s probably the first time in four games they haven’t been in the bonus and they’ve been averaging about 27 or 28 free throws, so keeping them off the line and out of the paint down the stretch was huge.”
 
Thompson scored 15 points, led Montana with three assists and also pulled down six rebounds. Dutro led the Grizzlies with eight rebounds and added six points. 
 
Samuel Hincapie, North Dakota’s leading scorer at 17 points per game, went just 4-of-13 from the floor and had 10 points as Montana’s defense held him in check. 
 
The Grizzlies overcame countless obstacles in their way to get Coach DeCuire his 246th career win. He is now tied with Montana State’s Mick Durham for the second most win by any Big Sky Conference coach. 
 
The team now heads to Kansas State with hopefully a smoother travel situation to take on the Wildcats on Monday, Nov. 16. 
 
The game on Saturday night may not have been pretty, but its one that may tell the story of this season and the character of this group in March.
 
 “Our guys had 15 minutes at the hotel when we got to town just to drop our bags off. Went to shootaround and shot in the dark, which is amazing for Jordan Clark to shoot the way he did tonight when all his shots were in the dark,” DeCuire said. “Then we went to pregame meal and ate out because we didn’t have anything arranged with the time change. 
 
“Our guys literally had an hour and 45 minutes in the hotel after a five-hour drive from Minnesota,” DeCuire continued. “It was a tough day, our guys had a million excuses, but they didn’t look for them. They just went out and competed and stuck together. I think that was the biggest thing is the guys had energy and hung in there for each other.”