MSU standout dies

WOLF POINT, Mont. – Willie Weeks, who played on one of the most celebrated high school basketball teams in Montana history and was a standout at Montana State University, died Monday of natural causes.

Weeks, who lived in Pullman for several years and was the father of former Pullman High School player Natalie Weeks, was 55.

The 6-foot-4 Weeks was the best player on Wolf Point’s 1967-68 and 1968-69 teams that posted a 43-8 record and won the Big 32 state championship in 1968. He earned high school All-America honors.

His former coach, Ron Harcharik, called Weeks a pure shooter.

“Any shot was a good shot,” Harcharik said. “He was a great competitor. He’s one of the best players Wolf Point ever had.”

Weeks went on to earn All-Big Sky honors at Montana State, where his 18.1 career scoring average is the fourth best in Bobcats history. In 1971, Weeks was a central figure in one of the most famous games in Brick Breeden Fieldhouse history. Weeks and teammate Bill Brickhouse each scored 38 points but were upstaged by Idaho State’s Willie Humes, whose 53 points is still the fieldhouse record.

“I was in the fieldhouse,” said former MSU coach Mick Durham. “I’m not sure that isn’t the greatest game in the fieldhouse.”

Weeks, an enrolled member of the Assiniboine Sioux Tribes of Fort Peck, Mont., was a former tribal council member and founded and was the first director of the Tribal Employment Rights Office.

His funeral is this morning in Wolf Point.