FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (March 8, 2020) – The Northern Arizona women's basketball team begins their run towards a Big Sky Championship on Tuesday in the conference quarterfinals versus Montana. Tip-off from the CenturyLink Arena in Boise, Idaho will be approximately 1:30 p.m. Arizona time.
Should NAU win, the Lumberjacks will face the winner of No. 1 Montana State and either No. 8 Northern Colorado or No. 9 Sacramento State in the semifinals at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday. The championship game will be Friday at 12 p.m. All times are local to Flagstaff (MST).
All of the Lumberjacks' tournament games in Boise will be streamed on Pluto TV Channel 531
online and on the Pluto TV app. The radio call of every game will be available in Flagstaff on 93.5 FM/AM 930 KAFF Country Legends. The radio broadcast can also be heard at
nauathletics.com/listen.
NAU, despite dropping its last three games, earned a first round bye and will enter the tournament as the No. 5 seed. The Lumberjacks closed the regular season with a 15-14 overall record and 12-8 Big Sky mark.
A win on Tuesday over Montana would not only push NAU into the Big Sky semifinals for the first time in 13 years, but it would also clinch the program's first winning season since that 2006-07 campaign. To do so, the Lumberjacks will need to snap a three-game losing streak to end the regular season including a 68-63 loss to Portland State last Wednesday.
The Lumberjacks will ride two of the Big Sky's top three scorers into the tournament. Junior
Khiarica Rasheed and redshirt junior
Jacey Bailey rank second and third respectively with 16.8 and 14.4 points per game respectively. Rasheed led the Big Sky in conference play in scoring with 18.9 points per game, scoring in double-figures in all 20 games.
Redshirt sophomore
Nina Radford and junior
Lauren Orndoff average 11.9 and 8.6 points per game respectively, while redshirt junior
Caitlin Malvar leads the team with 4.7 assists per game.
Rasheed, Bailey, Radford, Orndoff and Malvar have started all 29 games this season. They are the only Big Sky team this season to start the same five in every game.
Montana took both matchups against NAU this season on Dec. 28, 79-71 in Flagstaff, and Feb. 27, 70-57 in Missoula. The Lady Griz have won 14 of the last 15 head-to-head meetings and five of seven all-time matchups in the conference tourney.
The Lady Griz are the tournament's fourth-seed with a 17-12 overall record and an identical 12-8 conference record as NAU. Montana won three of its last four games, but is coming off an 84-81 overtime loss to Southern Utah.
About Montana:
Record: 17-12, 12-8 Big Sky
All-Time Series: UM, 59-12
Last Meeting: UM, 70-57 (Feb. 27, 2020)
