In Missoula, basketball winter belongs to the Grizzlies. The Montana men’s basketball program is the Big Sky Conference’s standard-bearer: 25 conference championships, 13 NCAA Tournament appearances, 13 regular-season crowns and 12 tournament titles. No program in the league has won more, and under head coach Travis DeCuire — a Montana alum entering his 13th season — the Griz have been winners or runners-up in the Big Sky in each of the last three years. The 2026–27 season is about reloading without the best scorer in the conference.
Money Williams is gone. The Oakland guard produced 709 points last season, led the Big Sky in scoring at 19.5 per game, and carried Montana to the 2025 Big Sky Tournament title — an 83-72 win over Eastern Washington on March 3, 2025, that sent the Griz dancing. After the season, Williams transferred to Boston College, taking the program’s offensive engine to the ACC. It’s the portal era’s cruelest math: develop a star, watch a power conference sign him.
But DeCuire has been here before, and his track record is the reason for calm in Missoula. Three NCAA Tournament trips in twelve seasons. The Big Sky’s best defense across his tenure — Montana finished third in defensive efficiency last year and has routinely been the league’s stingiest unit. DeCuire’s teams win with toughness, half-court discipline and Dahlberg Arena, where he is 68-23 in Big Sky home games, a .747 clip that ranked among the nation’s best over the past decade-plus.
The 2026–27 roster is a blend of returners and reclamation projects. Senior forward Trae Taylor (San Diego) brings size at 6-foot-9. Guards Chase Henderson (Des Moines), Brooklyn Hicks (Seattle) and Tyler Thompson (Fairfield, Calif.) form the backcourt core, with Thompson and Henderson both capable of the kind of leap Williams once made. Amari Jedkins (Racine, Wis.) and Kadyn Betts (Pueblo, Colo.) add forward depth, while Tyler Isaak (Danville, Calif.) and Grant Kepley (Bellingham, Wash.) compete for minutes on the wing. Missoula’s own Connor Dick (Hellgate High) is the hometown favorite. Graduate forward Te’Jon Sawyer (San Francisco) brings 6-foot-8, 255 pounds of interior presence, and freshmen Luke Moxon (Arcata, Calif.) and Kenyon Aguino (Albuquerque) are the future.
The schedule, released in September, is a gauntlet by design. An exhibition against Cal State Bakersfield on Oct. 24 opens the Dahlberg slate. Then the road: Montana’s first seven Division I opponents all come away from Missoula, including a Nov. 10 visit to San Francisco and a trip to North Dakota — where the Griz are 13-3 since 2014 and have won 10 of the last 11. Carroll College (Nov. 23) and the University of Providence (Dec. 21) visit for the annual NAIA in-state battles. The Big Sky slate expanded this year — two more conference games, including an early-December date — and 15 home games give the Griz every chance to defend Dahlberg.
The rivalry games are circled in maroon and silver. Montana State visits Missoula on Feb. 27 to close the regular season; the Griz travel to Bozeman’s Brick Breeden Fieldhouse on Jan. 23. The Cat-Griz basketball rivalry is one of the West’s best — two programs, 200 miles apart, who have spent the last half-decade trading Big Sky supremacy.
What’s at stake is DeCuire’s fourth NCAA trip — and proof of concept. The Big Sky preview consensus has Montana in the second tier this season, behind a Montana State team returning nearly everyone, precisely because Williams’ 709 points walked out the door. DeCuire’s answer, every year, is the same: defense travels, the system produces, and somebody always steps up. The last three seasons ended as winners or runners-up. In a league where the tournament is everything, the Grizzlies’ March pedigree — 12 tournament titles, more than anyone — is the tiebreaker that matters.
DeCuire’s Montana roots run deeper than the coaching tenure. He played point guard for the Grizzlies from 1992 to 1994 under Stew Morrill, running the show for teams that won Big Sky titles and reached the NCAA Tournament. He left as the program’s all-time assists leader — a record that stood for years — then spent nearly two decades as an assistant at Old Dominion, California and elsewhere before coming home in 2014. When he talks about what Montana basketball means, he’s talking about his own youth: the kid from Seattle who found a home in Missoula and never really left.
The lineage matters in Missoula. Larry Krystkowiak starred here in the 1980s before a long NBA career. Anthony Johnson’s 2010 heroics — 42 points in the Big Sky title game comeback against Weber State — remain the single greatest individual performance in conference tournament history. The 2006 team upset Nevada in the NCAA first round. The Grizzlies have never reached the Sweet 16, but they have been the team nobody wants to see in March: disciplined, physical and utterly unafraid.
Dahlberg Arena remains the fortress. When it’s full and loud, with the student section ringing the court, there is no harder road trip in the Big Sky. The Griz have won 11 straight there at various points in the DeCuire era. Money Williams may be in Chestnut Hill now, but the program he left behind knows exactly who it is: defend, rebound, win at home, and be playing your best basketball when Boise arrives in March.