The University of Northern Colorado men’s basketball team is heading to the school’s first ever NIT after a 91-83 loss to Montana Wednesday in the finals of the Big Sky Conference Tournament.
After smothering their first two opponents on the defensive end, Montana made just about everything early — and didn’t miss much throughout the rest of the game either. The Grizzlies shot 65% from the field and 64% from beyond the arc. The Bears offense wasn’t exactly cold, shooting 59% and 49% from three, but just couldn’t keep up.
“At the end of the day, when you score in the 80’s and you finish the game at like 60%, you probably shouldn’t lose,” coach Steve Smiley said. “I thought we played really hard. Give a lot of credit to Montana. They made tough shots all night.”
After a season in which it was clear that the Big Sky regular season title was a two-horse race after just a few games, it only made sense that it would come down to UNC and Montana with a trip to March Madness on the line. The two split the season, with each team picking up their win in enemy territory — UNC winning 81-57 on Jan. 11 in Missoula and the Griz winning 86-78 on Feb. 6 in Greeley.
Wednesday’s game was the first time the top two seeds have squared off for the conference title since 2016 — when No. 1 Weber State beat No. 2 Montana 62-59.
If Montana watched the Bears play defense in their first two games of the Big Sky tournament, they sure didn’t let it get to them.
Montana had 16 points with just 4 minutes, 30 seconds played in the game. In Tuesday’s semifinal, Montana State scored just 17 points in the first half.
Montana took a 48-39 lead into halftime, but their offensive eruption didn’t stop there. The Griz made their first five shots out of halftime, eventually stretching their lead to 14 at 59-45 with 16:22 left to play.
But, as they have all season, the Bears battled back. They went on an extended 28-14 run to cut the Bobcats lead to just one at 74-73 with just under 3:30 to play.
“I think our belief level was really good, and I don’t think anyone panicked,” Smiley said. “We were really frustrated with the way we were playing on the defensive end, but nobody panicked. And when we got it back down to one, I think there was a belief like, ‘OK, this is exactly where we’re supposed to be right now.”
But that was as close as the Bears would get. The Griz stretched the lead back to four in the next couple possessions and Kai Johnson hit a dagger stepback 3 with Quinn Denker in his face to stretch the lead to seven and take all the wind out of UNC’s sails.
University of Northern Colorado’s Jaron Rillie shoots over a defender in the Bears 91-83 loss to Montana in the final round of the Big Sky Conference Tournament March 12, 2025 at Idaho Central Arena in Boise, Idaho. (Courtesy/Big Sky Conference)Super senior standouts
“There were a couple of paper cuts in that stretch,” Smiley said. “We’d love to have those back.
When Montana was rolling early, graduate senior Jaron Rillie was nearly singlehandedly keeping UNC in the game. Rillie finished with 24 points, and at one point had made 10 of 11 from the field.
Rille and fellow graduate senior Isaiah Hawthorne both made the All-Tournament team. Hawthorne added 14 points in Wednesday’s championship game, but paced the Bears with 29 in their opening win vs. Weber State.
From deep
Smiley talked after each of the Bears first two contests about how crucial it was to stop their opponents from getting hot from behind the arc.
After Weber State made just two 3’s Sunday and Montana State made just four on Tuesday, Montana made 5 in the first half. The Griz finished 7 of 11 from 3-point range.
How we got here
Through it’s first two games in the Big Sky Conference Tournament, No. 1 seeded UNC left no doubt why they were widely considered the favorite coming in. They Bears won their first two games by a total of 51 points — 76-52 over No. 9 Weber State Sunday, then 72-45 over Montana State Tuesday.
Second-seeded Montana had been almost as impressive coming in. The Grizzlies had won 13 of their last 14 ahead of Wednesday night’s finale. And after a 74-65 quarterfinal victory over Northern Arizona that was surely closer than Griz fans would have liked, they bounced back impressively in the semis with a 78-55 win over No. 6 Idaho.
Not done yet
While the loss is obviously disappointing for this Bears team, their historic season isn’t quite over. After securing the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament — and performing well enough in a handful of metrics the basketball nerds love to quote — UNC will be heading to it’s first-ever NIT.
The NIT is older than the NCAA tournament, but plays obvious second fiddle to the big dance.
For years, regular-season conference champions that didn’t qualify for the NCAA Tournament by winning their conference tournament were guaranteed a spot in the National Invitation Tournament — or NIT.
Starting last season, that was no longer the case, with the tournament instead opting for more bids going to larger-conference teams.
After some further tweaking this year, the tournament now gives out a lower number of automatic bids to smaller conference teams that have proven worthy throughout the season. The tournament now assigns teams a “KNIT” score, which averages a schools ranking in seven popular metrics:
• NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET): Measures team performance taking into account game results, strength of schedule, game location, net offensive and defensive efficiency and the quality of wins and losses.
• KenPom: Predicts how strong a team would be if it played on a given night, independent of injuries or emotional factors.
• Basketball Power Index (BPI): Measures how many points better or worse per game a team is than an average Division I team.
• Kevin Pauga Index (KPI): Ranks every team’s wins and losses on a positive to negative scale, then averages the scores across a season to give a score to the team’s winning percentage.
• Torvik (TOR): Ranks teams based on offensive and defensive efficiency, omitting data once the game is mathematically decided. Games played in the previous 40 days count 100% and decrease 1% per day for 80 days.
• Wins above Bubble (WAB): The difference between the number of wins a team has and the number of wins an average “bubble” team would have against the same schedule.
• Strength of Record (SOR): Ranks the strength of a teams record, weighing the opponents played and the likelihood an average 25th ranked team would have the team’s record or better.
Each of those metrics ranks teams from 1-364 (the No. of Division I teams), with the No. 1 team being the best according to the metric.
Regular season conference champions who secure the No. 1 seed in their conference tournament and have a “KNIT” score of 125 or below after all conference games have been played secure an automatic bid to the NIT.
The Bears KNIT score the day after conference play wrapped up: 124.28.
When the Bears found out they had qualified, Smiley called it “a big deal.” And while he is still surely excited about the opportunity, he wasn’t thinking about it Wednesday night.
“That’s just not really on our minds tonight,” he said.
At 25-9, the bears are one win away from matching the University’s single-season record. Smiley was on former coach Jeff Linder’s staff for the other winningest season in 2017-18. Linder is now an assistant at No. 9 Texas Tech.
That 17-18 team won four games on their way to a title in the now-defunct College Insider Tournament, clinching the University’s only postseason tournament title.
The first round of the NIT will be played on Tuesday and Wednesday. Early round games are hosted by top teams, and the semifinals and championship game will be played at Butler’s Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
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