Montana Girls Shine, Wyoming Boys Sweep All-Star Series

One Wyoming team had no problems ending one — and starting its own.

The 2024 Midland Roundtable Montana-Wyoming All-Star Basketball Series ended Saturday with the Montana leg of the two-day doubleheader at Lockwood High School, and it ended with two sweeps by way of the Montana girls and Wyoming boys.

Montana’s girls all-star squad completed the weekend double over Wyoming — and won its 15th straight game in the series — by holding The Cowboy State to a tied record-low in points in Saturday’s opener.

And in the boys nightcap, Wyoming (which one night earlier in Gillette, Wyoming had ended Montana’s 22-game winning streak in the series) captured its first sweep in the series in 13 years by successfully shooing away a late comeback from the hosts.

Despite its two defeats this weekend, Montana’s boys still hold the all-time mark in the series by a wide margin (67-29). Meanwhile, Montana’s girls extended their own lengthy all-time lead (41-13) over their southern neighbors with their two victories.

Team Montana girls coach Wes Keller put his players through some defense-heavy drills during the team’s shootaround Saturday morning after it gave up more points than it liked in the Wyoming leg of the all-star series.

Big Sky Country locked in and shut down Wyoming from the opening tip, rolling to one of its most dominant wins of its now 15-game winning run going into 2025’s matchups next summer.

Wyoming’s 35 points scored were the joint-fewest it had ever put up in the series’ history, tying its low mark previously set in 2018. And you can bet that fact was a beaming point of pride for Team Montana postgame.

“Last night, they scored more on us than we were hoping for them to score,” Billings West grad Kourtney Grossman, who is bound to continue her hoops career at Eastern Washington in the winter, said. “So then this morning at our shootaround, we pretty much just emphasized defense the whole time. So we kind of went in there with the mission just to not let them score.”

With all 10 players on the roster signed to play for college basketball programs next school year, Montana’s girls all-star team had more than enough firepower to make it 15 wins in a row in the Montana-Wyoming All-Star Basketball Series.

And while it took a little bit of Friday’s game in Gillette for Team Montana to get going and impose its will, there was no such slow start back on home hardwood at Lockwood.

Team Montana’s small-school lineup — which it rode to a cozy victory Friday night in Gillette — got the start Saturday night and set the tone with a 24-9 first quarter, with Saco-Whitewater-Hinsdale’s Teagan Erickson and Paige Wasson, Roberts’ Taylee Chirrick, Roy-Winifred’s Isabelle Heggem and Chinook’s Hallie Neibauer establishing themselves as a formidable five all weekend when called upon.

The big-school options in the squad like West teammates Grossman (10 points) and Halle Haber (nine) pitched in, too, with a familiar face in Chirrick (who played at West her freshman and sophomore seasons) leading the scoring charge with a joint team-high 14 points, a mark shared with Wasson.

Doubling up Wyoming at halftime (38-19), a 13-4 run from Montana out of the locker room all but sealed it, and it was all about just how low the hosts could hold Wyoming from there. Cheyenne East’s Bradie Schlabs led Wyoming with a game-high 16 points, but no other teammate scored more than five points on Montana’s stout defense.

“I think Montana girls basketball’s been good for a long time, people are just starting to realize that,” Keller said. “There’s more opportunities, AAU opportunities for these kids to get out and play against better competition. And ultimately, at the end of the day, that helps them improve when they go back to their high school teams.”

Wyoming boys all-star team coach Shawn Neary cracked the code.

Not since 2011 had The Cowboy State swept — or even won a game — in the Montana-Wyoming All-Star Basketball Series, with Big Sky Country ripping out win after win year after year, no matter if the game was in Montana or Wyoming.

So, how did Neary and Wyoming pull off a historic two-fer this weekend? By keeping it loose, fun and emulating one of the most entertaining teams in college basketball.

“We were going to try to play like Alabama,” Neary, also the Gillette College men’s basketball team’s head coach, said of his strategy. “It was either going to be a 3 or a layup.”

It was a simple mantra for Wyoming to follow — but one that worked wonders.

Cheyenne Central’s Joe Sawyer, Green River’s Tharin Archibald and Sheridan’s Garrett Spielman all scored 16 points Saturday to lead Wyoming to a wilder win than the one it got a day earlier on home soil, considering that Montana cut what was a 17-point deficit at halftime down to five in the fourth quarter.

But with the freeflowing style that they thrived upon both nights with hot shooting and plenty of transition ball, Wyoming stayed cool and held off a game-high 25 points from Frenchtown’s Eli Quinn, who is signed to play collegiately at Montana Tech.

In similar fashion to Friday night, Wyoming was down by a small margin (23-19) after one quarter but turned on the jets in the second frame. The Cowboy State embarked on an 18-1 run to close the half — emulating the game-breaking 16-0 run they pulled off in the second quarter in Gillette — and never lost the lead again, but it did get hairy late.

Down nine points entering the fourth, a Quinn and-1 and a bucket from Manhattan Christian’s Mason Venema made it a 77-72 Wyoming lead with under six minutes to play, putting the visitors in danger of a collapse. A strong 11-0 response from Wyoming upped the lead right back to 16, however, and though Montana tried once again to rescue the game by cutting it to eight with 1:40 to go, it was too little, too late.

But for Wyoming, clinching the sweep was oh, so sweet.

“It shows that we can play with anyone, too,” Sawyer, Wyoming’s Gatorade player of the year this past season, said on the sweep’s impact. “We play with anyone, no matter what our population is, how small we are. We had some bigs this year, too, (and) that was big, and (it) just shows that we’re more than just a small state.”