MISSOULA — The Montana women’s basketball program will have five new faces in the gym next month when the Lady Griz convene for summer workouts.
First-year coach Nate Harris, who guided Montana to within a last-second shot of a Big Sky Conference championship in Boise in March in an interim role, signed four players to scholarship contracts since being named head coach a little more than two months ago.
The four transfers join incoming freshman Rae Ehrman (Eden Prairie, Minn./Eden Prairie HS), who signed a scholarship contract in November, as Montana’s newcomers.
The new additions:
- Jocelyn Land, a 6-foot forward from Chanhassen, Minn. (Holy Family Catholic HS), who played one season at Butler and will have three seasons to play at Montana.
- Kennedy Gillette, a 6-foot guard from Rexburg, Idaho (Sugar-Salem HS), who played two seasons at the College of Southern Idaho, where she was a third-team NJCAA All-American this past season on a 23-win team.
- Ava Cossette, a 5-foot-10 guard from Maple Grove, Minn. (Maple Grove HS), who redshirted last season at South Dakota, her first with the Coyotes. She will have four years of eligibility with the Lady Griz.
- Zoey Washington, a 5-foot-8 guard from Mahtomedi, Minn. (St. Croix Lutheran Academy), who played the last two seasons at St. Thomas and will have two years of eligibility at Montana.
Before Harris could dive into the transfer portal, which opened shortly after he was hired, his first order of business was to hold the center. He initially needed to focus on the players his team was, in theory, going to have back.
Point guard Mack Konig, who would have been the Big Sky tournament MVP had Montana State’s last-second shot in the title game not rolled in, and Avery Waddington, who averaged 14.7 points on 50% shooting and 7.7 rebounds in Boise, were the foundation he wanted to build from.
He needed them to return, Konig for her senior season, Waddington for her sophomore campaign.
As action in the transfer portal intensified, Montana would lose only one player via outgoing transfer, Izabella Zingaro. Nine of 10 who could return opted to come back. The center held. Montana will be one of the favorites in the Big Sky next winter because of it.
“Goal No. 1 was to keep our roster as intact as possible, especially the kids who played really, really well down the stretch,” said Harris. “In 2025, that’s not a given. A lot of teams’ really good players are now playing at other places.”
Only after working from the inside out could he then turn his complete focus to the portal to fill in his first full team’s areas of need.
“We wanted to recruit players who really fit the direction we’re going basketball-wise while maintaining the quality of human beings we have in our program,” said Harris.
“We’ll never be a team that goes out and shoots from the hip and just takes random kids. If we’re taking somebody, we know them or have somebody that knows them, people we know really well who can serve as references for them.”
In a basketball sense, Harris going forward wants to recreate the team he had in Boise, the one that held the tournament’s top three seeds to 59.7 points per game and 35.6% shooting while spacing the floor on the offensive end and attacking and distributing.
The Big Sky’s top teams (almost) had no answer for that version of the Lady Griz.
“We wanted to get more versatile, get a little more length, get kids who can really shoot it while fitting in with what we want to do defensively,” said Harris.
“I think we did that with the kids we brought in. They each have their own strengths but all of them can hurt you in multiple ways while also playing really hard.”
Four of Montana’s five newcomers hail from Minnesota, home to some of the nation’s top prep basketball, with many of those players competing outside of their high school teams with the Minnesota Fury, one of the top travel-ball organizations in the country.
All four of Montana’s Minnesota newcomers have spent time playing for Fury.
“Beyond them being really good players, it’s kids who appreciate what this program is. It really works for them,” said Harris. “The kids we’ve had from that program have really enjoyed it and really flourished. The things we’re about, they’re about.”
Butler, where Land was a freshman last season, opened 10-3 but finished under .500 at 16-18. The Bulldogs, after losing in the opening round of the Big East tournament, were selected to play in the WNIT.
Land, who averaged 3.4 points and 1.1 rebounds as a freshman, made her only two starts of the season in Butler’s two WNIT games.
She had 13 points on 5-of-10 shooting in Butler’s 61-54 victory over UIC and 11 points on 5-of-11 shooting in a season-ending loss at Purdue-Fort Wayne. Given the chance, she began to resemble the player who totaled more than 2,200 points as a prep player, when she averaged more than 30 as a senior.
“She was kind of in between roles during the season but down the stretch, when they lost some people to the portal early, she played a ton of minutes and really scored it,” said Harris.
“She was a tremendous high school player who knows how to put the ball in the basket. I think she is going to make a huge impact for us in terms of her ability to score all over the floor. She is a really high-level player who has a chance to have a distinguished career at Montana.”
Gillette averaged 9.0 points while playing 16.3 minutes as a freshman for the College of Southern Idaho in 2023-24, hitting 41 3-pointers on 36.9% shooting for a team that won 28 games and advanced to the NJCAA national tournament.
Gillette upped her averages to 13.9 points and 5.7 rebounds last season, hitting 52 3-pointers with a high scoring game of 27. She got to the free throw line 114 times, where she shot 80.7%.
“Kennedy has been a leader on teams that have won a lot of games and has been counted on by her team,” said Harris. “Being counted on isn’t something that is going to be new for her. I think when she gets in our program, she’s really going to flourish.
“She has great length and plays really, really hard and is versatile. She can hurt you in a lot of different ways offensively. She’ll fill the role that Tyler (McCliment-Call) had a little bit, where she can score all over the floor and guard lots of different people.”
No one has seen Cossette, who also played volleyball and competed in the track and field jumps at Maple Grove High, at full strength since her sophomore year of high school.
She injured her knee before her junior season, had it repaired and went through the long rehab. The injury cost Cossette her freshman season at South Dakota.
“She was playing great (before her initial knee injury),” said Harris. “Now it’s starting to heal up and she’s feeling good. At 100%, she is very athletic and very talented.
“Whether it’s this coming season or the year after, she’s going to make a huge difference with her ability to score and her ability to guard anyone on the floor with how athletic she is for 5-10.”
Washington played in 18 games at St. Thomas the last two seasons. She was a 1,000-point scorer at St. Croix Lutheran and three times was voted all-conference for the Crusaders.
She fits perfectly the Lady-Griz-in-Boise type of competitor Harris was looking for to complete his incoming group of players.
“For as important as being a good teammate is and guarding the right way, I wanted to bring in somebody who really embodied that. Zoey is a world-class teammate and someone you can count on to have the right approach,” said Harris.
“Beyond that, she is somebody who really guards. Everybody wants to point to what went right in Boise and why this team did what it did. It’s because that group finally bought into how hard you have to play defensively, how physical you have to play.
“Zoey is someone who is committed to that and sets the tone and really holds herself and her teammates accountable to how hard you have to play defensively to be really good.”
Ehrman got her senior season at Eden Prairie High rolling with a 38-point game against DeLaSalle in November, scored her 1,000th point as an Eagle in February and collected a full load of awards at season’s end.
She was voted All-Lake Conference and honorable mention all-state, and was named a Minnesota Miss Basketball candidate after being named a McDonald’s All-American Game nominee in January.
Did she win the 3-point shooting contest at the Minnesota Girls Basketball All-Star Game in April? Of course she did.
“Rae has a chance to have as impactful a freshman year as we’ve seen recently,” said Harris. “There are not many people nationally who can shoot the ball the way she can.
“She is going to be somebody who can really stretch the floor, which only creates more opportunities for our kids who are really good getting downhill.”
Konig (11.6 per game) and Waddington (10.0) led Montana in scoring last season, with Konig also leading the team with 165 assists (5.3 per game). Waddington had a shooting line of .458/.372/.900 as a freshman.
Adria Lincoln (13), Alex Pirog (eight), Aby Shubert (five) and Macy Donarski (three) also made starts for Montana.
“I expect this to cap off our signings but anytime you have roster spots available, you never know if that’s the case,” concluded Harris.
