Wendy's MSU Hall Inducts Four Standouts, Two Teams on Friday
9/22/2006 12:00:00 AM | General
When Quadre Lollis says he wouldn't miss tonight's Wendys' MSU Athletics Hall of Fame Induction ceremony for anything in the world, he means it.
Lollis arrived in Bozeman on Thursday, and when nine of his 10 varsity teammates from the 1996 Big Sky Conference Championship team assemble on Friday evening, they will be inducted into the school's Hall of Fame. The 1996 Big Sky MVP's return to Bozeman began in Italy, where he begins his 11th season as a professional basketball player in October.
"You can tell I wouldn't miss this," he says with a laugh. "I came from a long ways away."
And so it is on a rainy autumn afternoon, as the 1996 Big Sky Champs re-assembled in Brick Breeden Fieldhouse, swapping stories, making some up, and rekindling friendships. Mick Durham, the architect of that great '96 squad, said he is not surprised that 10 of the 11 varsity players returned for the ceremony that will make them only the fourth men's basketball squad so honored.
"It's fun to keep in touch with all our former players," said Durham, MSU's 16th-year head coach. "But the guys that won championships, the players on the great teams, they are the ones that seem to always reach back to this place. They are the ones that call during Grizzly week most consistently. They keep in touch with each other, but they really stay in touch with what's going on here."
Durham, who retired in March as the winningest coach in Big Sky history after 16 years as MSU's head coach, is inducted with his greatest team, and also as an individual. "To get up and talk about the team is one thing," Durham said, "but to go in myself, that's something. It should be a fun night." Durham joins former volleyball standout Michelle Usitalo, football All-America Gary Gustafson, and track and field All-America Brian Schweyen. The 1995 Big Sky Championship Bobcat women's golf team is also inducted Friday night.
The sold-out Hall of Fame induction ceremony begins at 7:30 pm (the evening begins with a social at 6 pm) on Friday. Below is a look at the honorees.
Below is a look at the 2006 induction class...
Brian Schweyen
Track, 1989-91
Montana State assistant track coach Tom Eitel knew Brian Schweyen was a special track and field athlete by watching him play basketball in the Fieldhouse. “I saw him throw the ball off the wall near the old record board once and catch it and dunk it,” Eitel says, an undercurrent of amazement in his voice more than a decade later.
Once Schweyen channeled that athleticism, which initially landed him on the Northern Montana College basketball team, into track and field at Montana State, he hit heights that had never before been reached. Literally. Schweyen became the first human on record to high jump seven-feet and pole vault 17-feet in the same day.
The Helena High product’s Bobcat career stands as far more than that singular, freakish accomplishment. Schweyen’s ability took him to the national stage, and helped elevate the Bobcat program to prominence. He won four Big Sky pole vault championships and two high jump titles, and earned All-America honors in the high jump in 1990.
Eitel remembers that meet for the level of competition, and for Schweyen’s out-of-nowhere performance. “That was a smoking-hot field,” Eitel says, “and they knew each other from competing against each other so often. When Brian jumped 7-4.5 he took the lead, and that place went dead quiet. Finally one of those guys said, ‘Nice jump.’ After that they took off, but he almost cleared 7-6.5. But at that meet everyone thought he was just a farm boy from Montana.”
The pole vault and high jump are essentially unrelated events, but Eitel says Schweyen drew some of his success from an activity completely separate from sports. “He could visualize better than anybody I’ve ever seen, and some of that might be because he is an artist. He could think about what needed to be done and transfer it over. He’d got on the runway and blow through a pole, then have to change poles. Most people need two or three practice runs with a new pole, but Brian would just look at the flex number and not have to change the way he vaulted. Mentally, I’ve never had anyone like him.”
Performance-wise, neither has Montana State. Schweyen holds the school’s indoor and outdoor high jump records, and remains in the top three in the pole vault. In fact, his lone decathlon as a Bobcat stands fifth on the school’s career list.
Eitel summed it up. “He is amazing.”
1995 Women’s Golf Team
Big Sky Champions
Dan Davies remembers hearing the commotion, but as the architect of the program that was about to win a Big Sky Championship in only its third year of existence, he wasn’t positive what it meant.
“I was walking up to the (Riverside Country Club’s second) green” when Jenny Wankel sank the 30-foot putt that put MSU in position to win the most unlikely – and one of the most thrilling – Big Sky crown in the school’s history. After Wankel sank the putt, “The (players’) parents confirmed what I thought,” said the Big Sky Coach of the Year, and the man who built that program from scratch. “They knew what was going on. I just thought I knew.”
What Davies did know is that the meet wasn’t over with Wankel’s putt. “Paula (Nelson) still had to make her putt,” Davies said of the four-footer that would clinch the crown. “Those are long putts when you’re the one that has to make them, but there was no one else I’d rather have putting there than Paula. She was our best putter.”
Nelson calmly sank the putt to clinch MSU’s title on the second sudden death playoff hole. Montana State had come from behind on the final day to upend powerful Weber State and upstart Idaho.
Jen McGregor, the four-time All-Big Sky Billings Central product who earned medalist honors in 1995, said later that “We knew we had a good team when we got together (as freshmen), but it would just take time.”
The Big Sky Championship stands as the high water mark for the group of players that formed the outstanding Bobcat golf teams of the 1990s, but the program accomplished more than one great afternoon. MSU quickly became competitive in tournaments throughout the Northwest and Midwest, a testimony to the ability and character of those players and their understated coach. That first class of Bobcat golfers – Jen McGregor, Paula Nelson, Kylie Peterson, Jenny Wankel and Shelley Hogan – never finished lower than third in the Big Sky. Younger players – Amy Trautman, Melanie Wasmann, Robyn Bramlette – strengthened program, and built Montana State as a competitive program from almost the beginning.
But that moment, on a glimmering autumn afternoon on the second hole at Riverside, stands as one of the exciting moments in MSU history, and as an affirmation of what a group can accomplish with hard work, ability, and some patience.
Michelle Usitalo
Volleyball, 1981-84
Not too many student-athletes that have played for three different head coaches would tell you that there experience playing collegiate ball was a good one.
However, Michelle Usitalo, who played under head volleyball coaches Bill Neville, Chris Bigelow and Pam Parks, found it to be a great opportunity; and she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
“They all came from the same coaching philosophy, so the transition wasn’t a big issue,” Usitalo said. “They all taught me something different, and I still hold those values today.”
Neville, Bigelow and Parks would in turn, tell you that Usitalo was a one-of-a-kind student-athlete.
She never missed a practice or game, even when sporting a broken thumb.
“Michelle is special,” Neville said in an interview back in the early ‘80s. “She brings a great winning attitude to the court. She is the type of player that keeps a person in coaching.”
Usitalo was part of two great Bobcat volleyball squads in 1983 and 1984. The 1983 team, under the direction of Pam Parks, finished second in the Mountain West Conference, MSU’s highest league finish in school history.
For her part, Usitalo, a Seattle native, was a two-time All-Mountain West selection, a two-time team captain, and was named the 1984 Montana State-Northwestern National Life Athlete of the Year.
Her name also remains in the all-time Bobcat volleyball record book. Usitalo is currently third in service aces, seventh in total attacks and ninth in kills.
“My time at Montana State was amazing,” Usitalo said. “I learned so much from my coaches and professors. I made life-long friends. It was a great place to go to school.”
Following graduation, Usitalo served as an assistant to the Bobcat volleyball program from 1987-89 under head coach Donna Palivec.
She currently resides in Boise with her husband Dan Stickney and two daughters Emily 12, and Jessica 9.
1995-96 Men’s Basketball
Big Sky Champions
In retrospect, it might have been inevitable.
From the time the Bobcat basketball team began practicing in October, 1995, until it left the court after a valiant effort in the NCAA Tournament against Syracuse, the 1995-96 Montana State men’s basketball team always had an air of destiny. The team seemed bound for great things.
Even a decade later, that team’s accomplishments remain startling. The 21 wins made that Bobcat squad the first since 1952 to win 20 games in back-to-back seasons. It won MSU’s first league championship since 1986 and its first Big Sky regular season title since 1987. MSU finished third in the nation in team field goal percentage in 1996, 13th in scoring margin, and 20th in scoring offense. The Bobcats set eight team or individual records over that two-year period.
MSU set the tone for its title run early, getting a December win against Gonzaga in the Fieldhouse and storming Butler in the Holiday Stores Classic. A mid-season slump that dropped the team’s record to 7-5, but Montana State foreshadowed its greatness with a 90-71 thrashing of Weber State, its chief challenger for the Big Sky crown, to open Big Sky play, and a week later MSU finished a three-game homestand by whipping the Grizzlies. That Bobcat team was sterling at home, but it won the league title on the road with a stirring come-from-behind 81-78 victory at Idaho and a 92-64, championship-clinching win at Eastern Washington.
With the Bozeman community in a frenzy, MSU welcomed the conference tournament with a sense of urgency, knowing it was the last Big Sky basketball tournament ever featuring ancient rivals Idaho and Boise State. MSU’s senior class had already tied a school record with 65 wins by one senior class, but that group knew that anything short of a league title would end their fine Bobcat careers.
Everyone knew what needed to be done. Montana State’s five fine seniors and an outstanding supporting cast made it happen.
The ‘Cats dominated Idaho 91-66 in the semifinals, setting up a showdown against defending Big Sky Champion Weber State. While Big Sky MVP Quadre Lollis battled Weber star Jimmy DeGraffenried, one even terms, the game quickly boiled down to a shootout between a pair of precocious guards. Ryan Cuff staked Weber to an early second half lead, and finished the game with 26 points. But for every basket by Cuff or DeGraffenried in the second half, the Bobcats answered.
Danny Sprinkle hit a three-pointer to tie the game at 48, and MSU would never again trail. While Lollis and Danny Sprinkle were providing offensive pyrotechnics, Scott Hatler provided peerless play at the point and Adam Leachman played sterling defense. And when it seemed things could turn in Weber’s favor midway through the second half, Mike Elliott had the biggest moment of his career. The senior guard hit a jumper in the lane, then did it again, and after a Lollis layup and two free throws MSU led 60-53. The game, at that point, was essentially over. Hatler hit a three. Lollis converted a three-point play, then hit another layup. Then Sprinkle hit a trey, and another, and a layup, and finished the night by sinking a free throw to give the Bobcats their final margin of victory.
In a game that was palpably intense for about 30 minutes, the ultimate team got the ultimate win. Danny Sprinkle was the MVP, but that award could have gone to any of seven or eight Bobcats. Hatler, the face of the program for four years, was carried off the court and into Bobcat immortality. Quadre Lollis proved he was the best little big man in the league that night, and five nights later showed he was the best little big man in college basketball. Nico Harrison’s defense and leadership, the selfless contributions of Elliott and Lance Fay and Nate Holmstadt and Danny Sullivan off the bench, all added up to a season for the ages, and to a season that, from the beginning, felt like destiny.
Gary Gustafson
Football, 1967-70
At a school known for producing outstanding defensive linemen, Gary Gustafson takes his place tonight with the best of the best.
Gustafson joined an already-established defensive line tradition at Montana State when he became a starter in 1968. Seven Bobcat defensive linemen had earned First Team All-Big Sky honors in the three years prior to Gustafson’s arrival in the starting lineup. Almost from the beginning, he dominated college offensive linemen the way he had at Simms High School.
Gustafson earned praise as a sophomore starter in 1968, helping lead Montana State to its third straight Big Sky Championship. The Bobcat defense faced a particularly challenging task that fall, facing West Texas A&M’s Mercury Morris, the high-powered offense of San Diego State coach Don Coryell, and a high-powered Grizzly offense that would win back-to-back league titles the next two years.
As a junior, Gustafson earned All-Big Sky honors, and as a senior gained national acclaim. His on-field accomplishments approached legendary status in during his senior year, when the Bobcats played Fresno State. “He destroyed our fullback the first play of the game,” FSU coach Darryl Rogers said after the game. “He’s really a hitter. I’m thankful he graduates and we won’t have to face him against next year.” Gustafson helped lead MSU to a 26-12 win in that game, the only loss Fresno State suffered in its first six games. Bobcat coach Tom Parac called it “the greatetst defensive performance I’ve seen in a long time.”
Gustafson was a two-sport captain at Simms High, and also competed in the National High School Rodeo three times. In a day and age when most college football teams hung their hats on running the football, Gustafson gained notoriety in the press for forcing teams to run away from him. But while Gustafson’s honors and superlatives stand the test of time, the element that cements his place in MSU history may be what has happened in more recent times. Gustafson is on record as Montana State’s first defensive line All-America. Since Gustafson, the Bobcats have produced six 10 All-America defensive linemen.
Mick Durham
Basketball, 1975-80
Assistant Basketball Coach, 1982-90
Head Basketball Coach, 1990-2006
In a day and age when sound bites trump substance and four years at one school seems an eternity, Mick Durham stands alone.
Durham’s unquestioned loyalty to Montana State, and his passion for the game of basketball first emerged as a Bobcat freshman in 1975, continued through an outstanding playing career. In 1983 he became an assistant at MSU, and in 1990 took over the program’s reigns as its head coach. For 16 years, Durham consistently led the Bobcats to success.
Activated to the varsity late in his freshman season of 1975-76, Durham became a starter as a sophomore and never looked back. His career was interrupted by a 1978 knee injury, but he finished his playing career as the most proficient free throw shooter over the course of a game and a season in school history. He remains in MSU’s top 10 in free throw percentage in a season.
Upon completing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MSU, Durham coached at Shepherd High for two years, returning to the Bobcat program in 1982, working as an assistant for Bruce Haroldson then Stu Starner. When Starner departed in 1990, Durham moved seamlessly into the program’s top spot.
Upon his retirement Durham said that things didn’t come easy for him, but he made coaching the Bobcats seem effortless, a fact that belied the extreme amount of effort and hours he put into the job. Through his time as the Bobcat head coach, he won 246 games and three Big Sky Coach of the Year awards. The 1996 Big Sky Champions stand as one of the greatest teams in Montana State University’s storied basketball history.
The lasting testimony to Durham’s class and the respect he earned within his profession was the outpouring of complements from his peers when he set the Big Sky’s all-time win mark. Durham was exalted as an outstanding coach who comported himself with class and grace at all times, something basketball fans in the Gallatin Valley had known for many years.
Lollis arrived in Bozeman on Thursday, and when nine of his 10 varsity teammates from the 1996 Big Sky Conference Championship team assemble on Friday evening, they will be inducted into the school's Hall of Fame. The 1996 Big Sky MVP's return to Bozeman began in Italy, where he begins his 11th season as a professional basketball player in October.
"You can tell I wouldn't miss this," he says with a laugh. "I came from a long ways away."
And so it is on a rainy autumn afternoon, as the 1996 Big Sky Champs re-assembled in Brick Breeden Fieldhouse, swapping stories, making some up, and rekindling friendships. Mick Durham, the architect of that great '96 squad, said he is not surprised that 10 of the 11 varsity players returned for the ceremony that will make them only the fourth men's basketball squad so honored.
"It's fun to keep in touch with all our former players," said Durham, MSU's 16th-year head coach. "But the guys that won championships, the players on the great teams, they are the ones that seem to always reach back to this place. They are the ones that call during Grizzly week most consistently. They keep in touch with each other, but they really stay in touch with what's going on here."
Durham, who retired in March as the winningest coach in Big Sky history after 16 years as MSU's head coach, is inducted with his greatest team, and also as an individual. "To get up and talk about the team is one thing," Durham said, "but to go in myself, that's something. It should be a fun night." Durham joins former volleyball standout Michelle Usitalo, football All-America Gary Gustafson, and track and field All-America Brian Schweyen. The 1995 Big Sky Championship Bobcat women's golf team is also inducted Friday night.
The sold-out Hall of Fame induction ceremony begins at 7:30 pm (the evening begins with a social at 6 pm) on Friday. Below is a look at the honorees.
Below is a look at the 2006 induction class...
Brian Schweyen
Track, 1989-91
Montana State assistant track coach Tom Eitel knew Brian Schweyen was a special track and field athlete by watching him play basketball in the Fieldhouse. “I saw him throw the ball off the wall near the old record board once and catch it and dunk it,” Eitel says, an undercurrent of amazement in his voice more than a decade later.
Once Schweyen channeled that athleticism, which initially landed him on the Northern Montana College basketball team, into track and field at Montana State, he hit heights that had never before been reached. Literally. Schweyen became the first human on record to high jump seven-feet and pole vault 17-feet in the same day.
The Helena High product’s Bobcat career stands as far more than that singular, freakish accomplishment. Schweyen’s ability took him to the national stage, and helped elevate the Bobcat program to prominence. He won four Big Sky pole vault championships and two high jump titles, and earned All-America honors in the high jump in 1990.
Eitel remembers that meet for the level of competition, and for Schweyen’s out-of-nowhere performance. “That was a smoking-hot field,” Eitel says, “and they knew each other from competing against each other so often. When Brian jumped 7-4.5 he took the lead, and that place went dead quiet. Finally one of those guys said, ‘Nice jump.’ After that they took off, but he almost cleared 7-6.5. But at that meet everyone thought he was just a farm boy from Montana.”
The pole vault and high jump are essentially unrelated events, but Eitel says Schweyen drew some of his success from an activity completely separate from sports. “He could visualize better than anybody I’ve ever seen, and some of that might be because he is an artist. He could think about what needed to be done and transfer it over. He’d got on the runway and blow through a pole, then have to change poles. Most people need two or three practice runs with a new pole, but Brian would just look at the flex number and not have to change the way he vaulted. Mentally, I’ve never had anyone like him.”
Performance-wise, neither has Montana State. Schweyen holds the school’s indoor and outdoor high jump records, and remains in the top three in the pole vault. In fact, his lone decathlon as a Bobcat stands fifth on the school’s career list.
Eitel summed it up. “He is amazing.”
1995 Women’s Golf Team
Big Sky Champions
Dan Davies remembers hearing the commotion, but as the architect of the program that was about to win a Big Sky Championship in only its third year of existence, he wasn’t positive what it meant.
“I was walking up to the (Riverside Country Club’s second) green” when Jenny Wankel sank the 30-foot putt that put MSU in position to win the most unlikely – and one of the most thrilling – Big Sky crown in the school’s history. After Wankel sank the putt, “The (players’) parents confirmed what I thought,” said the Big Sky Coach of the Year, and the man who built that program from scratch. “They knew what was going on. I just thought I knew.”
What Davies did know is that the meet wasn’t over with Wankel’s putt. “Paula (Nelson) still had to make her putt,” Davies said of the four-footer that would clinch the crown. “Those are long putts when you’re the one that has to make them, but there was no one else I’d rather have putting there than Paula. She was our best putter.”
Nelson calmly sank the putt to clinch MSU’s title on the second sudden death playoff hole. Montana State had come from behind on the final day to upend powerful Weber State and upstart Idaho.
Jen McGregor, the four-time All-Big Sky Billings Central product who earned medalist honors in 1995, said later that “We knew we had a good team when we got together (as freshmen), but it would just take time.”
The Big Sky Championship stands as the high water mark for the group of players that formed the outstanding Bobcat golf teams of the 1990s, but the program accomplished more than one great afternoon. MSU quickly became competitive in tournaments throughout the Northwest and Midwest, a testimony to the ability and character of those players and their understated coach. That first class of Bobcat golfers – Jen McGregor, Paula Nelson, Kylie Peterson, Jenny Wankel and Shelley Hogan – never finished lower than third in the Big Sky. Younger players – Amy Trautman, Melanie Wasmann, Robyn Bramlette – strengthened program, and built Montana State as a competitive program from almost the beginning.
But that moment, on a glimmering autumn afternoon on the second hole at Riverside, stands as one of the exciting moments in MSU history, and as an affirmation of what a group can accomplish with hard work, ability, and some patience.
Michelle Usitalo
Volleyball, 1981-84
Not too many student-athletes that have played for three different head coaches would tell you that there experience playing collegiate ball was a good one.
However, Michelle Usitalo, who played under head volleyball coaches Bill Neville, Chris Bigelow and Pam Parks, found it to be a great opportunity; and she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
“They all came from the same coaching philosophy, so the transition wasn’t a big issue,” Usitalo said. “They all taught me something different, and I still hold those values today.”
Neville, Bigelow and Parks would in turn, tell you that Usitalo was a one-of-a-kind student-athlete.
She never missed a practice or game, even when sporting a broken thumb.
“Michelle is special,” Neville said in an interview back in the early ‘80s. “She brings a great winning attitude to the court. She is the type of player that keeps a person in coaching.”
Usitalo was part of two great Bobcat volleyball squads in 1983 and 1984. The 1983 team, under the direction of Pam Parks, finished second in the Mountain West Conference, MSU’s highest league finish in school history.
For her part, Usitalo, a Seattle native, was a two-time All-Mountain West selection, a two-time team captain, and was named the 1984 Montana State-Northwestern National Life Athlete of the Year.
Her name also remains in the all-time Bobcat volleyball record book. Usitalo is currently third in service aces, seventh in total attacks and ninth in kills.
“My time at Montana State was amazing,” Usitalo said. “I learned so much from my coaches and professors. I made life-long friends. It was a great place to go to school.”
Following graduation, Usitalo served as an assistant to the Bobcat volleyball program from 1987-89 under head coach Donna Palivec.
She currently resides in Boise with her husband Dan Stickney and two daughters Emily 12, and Jessica 9.
1995-96 Men’s Basketball
Big Sky Champions
In retrospect, it might have been inevitable.
From the time the Bobcat basketball team began practicing in October, 1995, until it left the court after a valiant effort in the NCAA Tournament against Syracuse, the 1995-96 Montana State men’s basketball team always had an air of destiny. The team seemed bound for great things.
Even a decade later, that team’s accomplishments remain startling. The 21 wins made that Bobcat squad the first since 1952 to win 20 games in back-to-back seasons. It won MSU’s first league championship since 1986 and its first Big Sky regular season title since 1987. MSU finished third in the nation in team field goal percentage in 1996, 13th in scoring margin, and 20th in scoring offense. The Bobcats set eight team or individual records over that two-year period.
MSU set the tone for its title run early, getting a December win against Gonzaga in the Fieldhouse and storming Butler in the Holiday Stores Classic. A mid-season slump that dropped the team’s record to 7-5, but Montana State foreshadowed its greatness with a 90-71 thrashing of Weber State, its chief challenger for the Big Sky crown, to open Big Sky play, and a week later MSU finished a three-game homestand by whipping the Grizzlies. That Bobcat team was sterling at home, but it won the league title on the road with a stirring come-from-behind 81-78 victory at Idaho and a 92-64, championship-clinching win at Eastern Washington.
With the Bozeman community in a frenzy, MSU welcomed the conference tournament with a sense of urgency, knowing it was the last Big Sky basketball tournament ever featuring ancient rivals Idaho and Boise State. MSU’s senior class had already tied a school record with 65 wins by one senior class, but that group knew that anything short of a league title would end their fine Bobcat careers.
Everyone knew what needed to be done. Montana State’s five fine seniors and an outstanding supporting cast made it happen.
The ‘Cats dominated Idaho 91-66 in the semifinals, setting up a showdown against defending Big Sky Champion Weber State. While Big Sky MVP Quadre Lollis battled Weber star Jimmy DeGraffenried, one even terms, the game quickly boiled down to a shootout between a pair of precocious guards. Ryan Cuff staked Weber to an early second half lead, and finished the game with 26 points. But for every basket by Cuff or DeGraffenried in the second half, the Bobcats answered.
Danny Sprinkle hit a three-pointer to tie the game at 48, and MSU would never again trail. While Lollis and Danny Sprinkle were providing offensive pyrotechnics, Scott Hatler provided peerless play at the point and Adam Leachman played sterling defense. And when it seemed things could turn in Weber’s favor midway through the second half, Mike Elliott had the biggest moment of his career. The senior guard hit a jumper in the lane, then did it again, and after a Lollis layup and two free throws MSU led 60-53. The game, at that point, was essentially over. Hatler hit a three. Lollis converted a three-point play, then hit another layup. Then Sprinkle hit a trey, and another, and a layup, and finished the night by sinking a free throw to give the Bobcats their final margin of victory.
In a game that was palpably intense for about 30 minutes, the ultimate team got the ultimate win. Danny Sprinkle was the MVP, but that award could have gone to any of seven or eight Bobcats. Hatler, the face of the program for four years, was carried off the court and into Bobcat immortality. Quadre Lollis proved he was the best little big man in the league that night, and five nights later showed he was the best little big man in college basketball. Nico Harrison’s defense and leadership, the selfless contributions of Elliott and Lance Fay and Nate Holmstadt and Danny Sullivan off the bench, all added up to a season for the ages, and to a season that, from the beginning, felt like destiny.
Gary Gustafson
Football, 1967-70
At a school known for producing outstanding defensive linemen, Gary Gustafson takes his place tonight with the best of the best.
Gustafson joined an already-established defensive line tradition at Montana State when he became a starter in 1968. Seven Bobcat defensive linemen had earned First Team All-Big Sky honors in the three years prior to Gustafson’s arrival in the starting lineup. Almost from the beginning, he dominated college offensive linemen the way he had at Simms High School.
Gustafson earned praise as a sophomore starter in 1968, helping lead Montana State to its third straight Big Sky Championship. The Bobcat defense faced a particularly challenging task that fall, facing West Texas A&M’s Mercury Morris, the high-powered offense of San Diego State coach Don Coryell, and a high-powered Grizzly offense that would win back-to-back league titles the next two years.
As a junior, Gustafson earned All-Big Sky honors, and as a senior gained national acclaim. His on-field accomplishments approached legendary status in during his senior year, when the Bobcats played Fresno State. “He destroyed our fullback the first play of the game,” FSU coach Darryl Rogers said after the game. “He’s really a hitter. I’m thankful he graduates and we won’t have to face him against next year.” Gustafson helped lead MSU to a 26-12 win in that game, the only loss Fresno State suffered in its first six games. Bobcat coach Tom Parac called it “the greatetst defensive performance I’ve seen in a long time.”
Gustafson was a two-sport captain at Simms High, and also competed in the National High School Rodeo three times. In a day and age when most college football teams hung their hats on running the football, Gustafson gained notoriety in the press for forcing teams to run away from him. But while Gustafson’s honors and superlatives stand the test of time, the element that cements his place in MSU history may be what has happened in more recent times. Gustafson is on record as Montana State’s first defensive line All-America. Since Gustafson, the Bobcats have produced six 10 All-America defensive linemen.
Mick Durham
Basketball, 1975-80
Assistant Basketball Coach, 1982-90
Head Basketball Coach, 1990-2006
In a day and age when sound bites trump substance and four years at one school seems an eternity, Mick Durham stands alone.
Durham’s unquestioned loyalty to Montana State, and his passion for the game of basketball first emerged as a Bobcat freshman in 1975, continued through an outstanding playing career. In 1983 he became an assistant at MSU, and in 1990 took over the program’s reigns as its head coach. For 16 years, Durham consistently led the Bobcats to success.
Activated to the varsity late in his freshman season of 1975-76, Durham became a starter as a sophomore and never looked back. His career was interrupted by a 1978 knee injury, but he finished his playing career as the most proficient free throw shooter over the course of a game and a season in school history. He remains in MSU’s top 10 in free throw percentage in a season.
Upon completing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MSU, Durham coached at Shepherd High for two years, returning to the Bobcat program in 1982, working as an assistant for Bruce Haroldson then Stu Starner. When Starner departed in 1990, Durham moved seamlessly into the program’s top spot.
Upon his retirement Durham said that things didn’t come easy for him, but he made coaching the Bobcats seem effortless, a fact that belied the extreme amount of effort and hours he put into the job. Through his time as the Bobcat head coach, he won 246 games and three Big Sky Coach of the Year awards. The 1996 Big Sky Champions stand as one of the greatest teams in Montana State University’s storied basketball history.
The lasting testimony to Durham’s class and the respect he earned within his profession was the outpouring of complements from his peers when he set the Big Sky’s all-time win mark. Durham was exalted as an outstanding coach who comported himself with class and grace at all times, something basketball fans in the Gallatin Valley had known for many years.
Wednesday, June 10
Friday, March 27
Monday, March 23
Friday, March 13
