. . . Harding had 27 points to his name in the second half alone, and Weber State had 56 points as it mounted a comeback. When Montana’s Kendal Manuel hit a pair of free throws with 12 seconds left, WSU would need three more. Harding raced up the floor and stopped to put up a twisting 3-pointer. It hit front iron with 7 seconds left. Brekkott Chapman grabbed the rebound and missed a putback attempt. Michal Kozak grabbed that rebound but got tied up with Montana’s Michael Oguine before he could kick it outside for one final attempt. Time expired.
And just like that, Montana survived another WSU comeback, winning 83-80 on Thursday night at the Dee Events Center. “The game plan was to come out and be aggressive. I feel like we didn’t follow the game plan,” Harding said. “We’ve got to give them two halves. We’ve been really inconsistent game to game, half to half. We have to sure that up. It’s the end of the season, we can’t have breakdowns like this.”
The second half was starkly juxtaposed to the Wildcats’ 24-point output in the first frame. WSU head coach Randy Rahe said his team was too slow and too easy to guard in the first half. “We didn’t make one change, X’s and O’s,” Rahe said. “The pace in which we ran our offense in the first half was very slow. We have to play it fast. We did that in the second half and Montana had a hard time keeping up with us.”