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Weber State's Dyson Koehler (4) loses the ball against Montana State during the Big Sky quarterfinals on Monday, March 11, 2024, in Boise, Idaho.

Robert Casey, WSU Athletics

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Weber State's Dillon Jones (2) scoops a shot past Montana State's Brian Goracke (21) during the Big Sky quarterfinals on Monday, March 11, 2024, in Boise, Idaho.

Robert Casey, WSU Athletics

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Weber State's Dyson Koehler (4) scores a putback dunk over Montana State's Eddie Turner III (3) during the Big Sky quarterfinals on Monday, March 11, 2024, in Boise, Idaho.

Robert Casey, WSU Athletics

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Weber State men’s basketball seemed to have weathered a red-hot Montana State shooting display on Monday evening in the Big Sky tournament quarterfinals.

The Bobcats erased a 13-point lead by making seven 3-pointers in the first 10 1/2 minutes out of halftime, but free throws from Steven Verplancken and Blaise Threatt knotted the score at 63-63 with 6:56 left.

WSU could not keep the dam from breaking any longer, however, and the point could not have been made more clear: Montana State was going to shoot the Wildcats right back home to Ogden.

Eddie Turner and Brian Goracke hit 3s to put MSU up eight. On MSU’s next possession, WSU forced the Bobcats into two timeouts, the second coming with two seconds on the shot clock. Out of that timeout, Goracke split the lane and two screens for a straightaway 3. WSU center Alex Tew closed out hard enough that Goracke had to loft the ball much higher than his natural shooting motion.

His ball thudded in the square on the glass and dropped straight through the hoop.

No. 5 Montana State shot 10 of 14 from deep — and, at one point, made 14 consecutive field goals — on the way to 66 second-half points to eliminate No. 4 Weber State 91-82 at Idaho Central Arena in Boise.

“It just felt like a barrage and we couldn’t keep up,” WSU assistant coach Eric Daniels said on postgame radio. “This is a really painful end to the season.”

The defeat ends the college careers of Dillon Jones, KJ Cunningham and Verplancken, and marks seven straight seasons the Wildcats have failed to make the Big Sky tournament title game.

Weber State (20-12) led by as many as 13 on a 12-2 run that spanned halftime. It began when Jones assisted Viljami Vartiainen for a 3-pointer with 3:28 left in the first half.

That assist made Jones the first Division I men’s basketball player in at least the last 31 years to total 600 or more points, 300 rebounds, 160 assists and 60 steals in one season.

Jones cut for a layup and a 34-25 halftime lead, then scored a drive-and-one to start the second half. Threatt connected from behind the arc for a 40-27 lead with 18:55 left.

That began a scorching start to the second half up to the first media timeout. Weber State outscored MSU 16-13 in that time for a 50-38 lead with 14:44 left, and the two teams combined to shoot 5 of 6 from deep out of the locker room.

But Tyler Patterson and Robert Ford bookended a 13-0 run with 3-pointers to give MSU a 51-50 lead less than four minutes later. Jones scored at the rim to end the run, leading to the eventual 63-63 tie.

The Bobcats blistered the Wildcats with shot after shot, no matter the difficulty. Weber State totaled 11 offensive rebounds to MSU’s six, but a pair of Bobcat boards proved crucial in accumulating a second 13-0 run to make the score 76-63, a run that included the high-arcing Goracke triple.

“It was a heavy contest, it was shot to the moon and banked it in almost to seal the win,” Daniels said.

Blaise Threatt totaled 20 points, 11 rebounds and four assists for Weber State. Jones tallied 19 points, five assists and two rebounds. Dyson Koehler scored 14 points and Verplancken added 10. Cunningham totaled five points in his 139th career game.

Weber State shot 10 of 26 (38.5%) from the 3-point line, the program’s best performance both in percentage and makes over nine games since the Big Sky moved the conference tournament to Boise. But in a tournament where all teams to date had shot poorly from 3, Montana State finished 13 of 27.

“They kept making 3s over hands. I thought a couple times we even got a piece of the ball, Dillon tipped one that Turner made,” WSU head coach Eric Duft said. “It’s just them stepping up making shots over hands that are contested, that are hard shots. We had some of those on our end that we missed, and that was the difference.”

For Montana State, Ford totaled 27 points, six rebounds and four assists, and Goracke added 25 points. Patterson’s three 3s led to 12 points.

The decision continued a string of upsets after No. 1 Eastern Washington and No. 2 Northern Colorado both lost Sunday on the first day of the quarterfinals.

No. 10 seed Sacramento State had never won multiple games in the Big Sky tournament but did so with a near wire-to-wire, 74-69 defeat of EWU to reach the semifinals. EWU is 31-5 in the last two Big Sky regular seasons but 0-2 in the tournament. Montana State will face Sacramento State.

No. 8 Idaho State had not won multiple Big Sky tournament games since 1987 but did so and reached the semifinals by topping Northern Colorado 83-76.

No. 3 Montana and No. 6 Portland State contested the fourth quarterfinal game, and that result was unavailable at press time late Monday.

Jones finishes his career in the top five of at least five categories in the Weber State record book: fifth in points (1,782), third in rebounds (1,138), second in assists (412) and first in steals (208), while tallying a second-best 497 made free throws.

He’s the only men’s player in Big Sky history to total 1,000 points, 1,000 rebounds, 250 assists and 100 steals in a career — and his benchmarks all rose to 1,700, 1,100, 400 and 200, respectively.

“He’s a legacy player at Weber State,” Duft said. “He could have left us, could have transferred, probably made some good NIL money and decided it was more important to be at Weber State. He could’ve (gone) to the draft last year, wanted to come back and move up in the draft.

“He’s got great teammates, too … these guys have helped Dillon … he gets a lot of attention, we have NBA guys coming in every practice, interviews with Dillon, he’s got a lot going on, they never have any jealousy. They want what’s best for him and our team. It’s a credit to Dillon and our teammates for hanging in there and helping him grow and helping our team grow.”

But the likely first-round draft pick becomes one of three recent all-time greats (Damian Lillard, Jerrick Harding) to never reach the NCAA Tournament.

The Wildcats started the season with a bang, claiming a top-25 win at Saint Mary’s (who is, as of this week, again ranked in the Associated Press Top 25). Wins away from home also included Yale, Oral Roberts and Wyoming, with a win over Summit League champion South Dakota State at home.

At 11-4 overall and with two blowout conference wins, Weber State looked primed to have a memorable season. But after the two Summit League challenge wins, WSU lost at Sacramento State without Tew to start a stretch of five losses in six games, putting the Wildcats’ league record at 3-5.

WSU responded by finishing 8-2 down the stretch but any of those seven league losses, if won, would have clinched the No. 2 seed for the Wildcats.

Instead, the program seemingly stuck in a perpetual 3- or 4-seed since 2017 had to face the same No. 5 Montana State team that rocked the Wildcats in the final 10 minutes for a huge run and comeback win one week ago.

Monday, it happened again.

“They’re shooting the ball at an incredible clip over the last five or six games,” Duft said about MSU.

Weber State’s margin for error felt small this season, due to cold shooting streaks and struggling against matchups like Idaho State and Sacramento State that featured longer, more athletic players in the paint. WSU was one of the best defensive rebounding teams in the country and scored efficiently while taking care of the ball, but lost the defensive plot this year by allowing opponents to score too easily, at times, in the paint.

The result was, according to Ken Pomeroy, a drop from last year’s 109th-ranked defensive team nationally to 194th this season.

As play-by-play man Tony Parks put it: “At their best, they were exceptional. But it was tough to see them at their best consistently.”

WSU struggled to find the right depth, with centers Arnaud Revaz and Handje Tamba not consistently impactful enough to keep on the court, meaning Weber’s defense struggled most of the time Tew went to the bench.

Vartiainen was the only young player ready to contribute. More readiness from players like Chris Dockery or Marko Sarenac would have gone a long way; instead, Jones played the fourth-most minutes in the country this season, and Verplancken and Koehler logged heavy minutes throughout the campaign as well.

The Wildcats are left to lick their wounds and continue building the roster absent Jones for the 2024-25 season, wondering if that will be the campaign that finally gets the ‘Cats dancing again. WSU will likely look to Threatt, Vartiainen and Sarenac to step into larger roles after getting their feet wet in Division I basketball.

With a few more newcomers likely to join the fold, WSU has three committed freshmen for next season: 6-foot-4 Trevor Hennig, the state champion and 4A Washington player of the year, stretch forward David Hansen of Canada, and 6-foot-5 guard Saadiq Moore from California, who is a post-prep player.

Other additions are likely to be Division I or junior college transfers. Weber State often found itself playing smaller lineups than opponents and could use more length in positions 2-5, including bolstering the scoring capabilities at the center spot.

Weber State is 126-91 (.581) overall and 80-49 (.620) in the Big Sky since playing in the 2017 tournament title game but is now 3-7 in the last seven conference tournaments.

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