Slow start costs Idaho women in 73-61 loss to Montana in Big Sky quarterfinals

BOISE – On Idaho’s last day of the 2024 basketball season, Carrie Eighmey got an eyeful of what she wants her team to look like down the road.

Some of it is already in place for the Vandals women. And a lot of it was to be seen in the jerseys across from them.

Idaho closed out Eighmey’s first season as a Division I head coach with a 73-61 loss to Montana in the quarterfinals of the Big Sky Conference Basketball Championships – but with a little momentum, too.

The Vandals, buried in a 24-point hole from chasing around Montana’s gifted scorers, whittled that in half with four minutes still to play – the kind of scrap Eighmey might regard as the first building block for her program.

“I loved our effort and our fight,” she acknowledged. “That’s kind of indicative of this team. They just keep plugging away.”

The key is not to have to plug from that far behind.

But the Grizzlies can create that kind of space quickly, as they did Monday at Idaho Central Arena. It’s a both a balanced and volatile mix: solid-to-excellent outside shooting, two difficult big forwards and hard-driving guards that love the open-floor game. And so Eighmey carries a vision of Year 2.

“Obviously, you look around and this is a league that can score at a high level, and we have to continue to find ways to score the basketball,” she said. “That means creating a more balanced team, with inside and outside threats. You look at Montana – that’s a phenomenal blueprint for what that looks like. They’re virtually unstoppable.”

That was on display from the opening tip, the Griz sprinting to a 20-11 after one quarter. The death blow came after halftime, Montana putting together a 25-point quarter that stretched the lead to 59-35 at one point. That burst included just one 3-pointer – from Central Valley grad MJ Bruno – and the usual inside grinding from Colfax’s Carmen Gfeller, but mostly it was a matter of spreading out and letting guards Mack Konig and Gina Marxen do their thing, often without the help of a ball screen.

It produced the first tournament win for Montana (22-8) since 2018.

While Idaho had to deal with a merry-go-round of scorers – five Griz players scored between 10 and 15 points – Montana could largely focus its efforts on Kennedy Johnson, Idaho’s all-league wing who has averaged better than 17 points a game the last six weeks.

She still got 24 on Monday , but it came on 23 shots – and none of it came over the last 71/2 minutes of the third quarter, when Montana pulled away. It took a village – rugged Dani Bartsch (14 rebounds, six blocks) took her turns, and the feisty Bruno was particularly impressive.

“We had some dead-ball matchups and some of it was on switches,” said UM coach Brian Holsinger. “Basically, it was many different people as possible. They’re not real deep right now, so if you have to go 35 or 40 minutes, you wear down a little bit. But she’s a real good player.”

Idaho’s depth – and inside game – took a hit in mid-season when 6-foot-3 Hope Butera was lost to an ACL tear, and Eighmey basically had a six-player rotation Sunday. That fed into the Vandals playing at the Sky’s slowest pace during a 15-16 season that included the oddity of winning six of nine conference games on the road, but only two at home.

“We built it with things we could control – defending and rebounding at a high level and playing with a lot of effort,” said Eighmey, who found four players in the transfer portal – Johnson (UC Santa Barbara), Butera (Florida International), Sarah Schmitt (Nebraska-Kearney) and Amalie Langer (San Francisco) – willing to make the buy-in.

“Our team took on their personalities in a lot of ways,” Eighmey said, “and we’re super grateful for them coming and building a foundation for the future.”