By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN
When Robin Selvig took over the University of Montana women’s basketball program it had won 32 games combined in the previous 4 years, and Shannon Schweyen takes over the program that has won 91 games in the past four seasons. Schweyen opens her head coaching career with three home games against Frontier Conference teams, MSU-Northern, Carroll and the University of Great Falls. Her first road test will come in the University of Iowa Tournament where the Lady Griz will open against South Dakota State.
For the first time in 20 years the Montana Grizzly football team plays just one home game before October 1st. Back in 1996 the Griz’ only September home game was a shutout of Cal Poly to go with road wins at Oregon State and Sacremento State, and of course that 96 team ended its season playing for the FCS national title.
After defeating the Pandas of the University of Alberta Saturday its only natural that the Griz soccer team opens facing another group of bears, The University of Oakland Grizzlies. Oakland is located just otuside of Detroit and is a Division I program whose teams play in the Horizon League. The Um soccer team faces tournament host Purdue in their second match of the weekend.
An unusual twist on Icharo Suzuki’s 3,000 hit. The historic hit came off of Coloradio Rockies pitcher Chris Rusin. What is particularly unique in this batter vs. pitcher meeting is that they share an October 22nd birthday except Icharo was born 13 years before Rusin.
Recently we did a comparsion of how many games the Lady Griz won and Griz won during the Selvig era. Got us wondering about Montana State. During the 11 season run of Tricia Binfored the MSU women have won 173 games while the Bobcat men over the same span have won 141, about a 3 game per season difference.
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Chris Walterskirchenhas been an observer of Montana sports for nearly half a century. A Kalispell native, Chris has worked in various capacities for professional and college sports organization of at various times: ranging from announcing and statistical work to the concessions and even a stint as a costumed mascot.
Chris has academic degrees in communications and elementary education. His style of sports trivia involves more than just who won and who lost, but also focuses on the obscure or human side of sports. In this blog you will learn things like the Grizzly football team has won 210 games over the 19 seasons since they have had Monte as their mascot or that UNLV is the only school that both the Griz and Lady Griz have both faced in the NCAA basketball tournament
When not following sports Chris enjoys taking care of animals of all kinds (a peacock rescue?) and reading to pre-schoolers.
