Kolby KickingWoman
and Dan Ninham
ICT
For the second consecutive year, Montana State University has made it to the NCAA basketball tournament, where the 14th-seeded Bobcats will take on the third-seeded Kansas State Wildcats on Friday, March 17.
A key factor in the Bobcat’s success is star guard RaeQuan Battle, Tulalip, the lone Native male and one of seven players and two coaches on college basketball’s biggest stage, March Madness.
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Battle will be in the spotlight in the men’s division along with Indigenous head coach Kelvin Sampson, Lumbee, who leads the top-seeded University of Houston Cougars. Sampson’s son, Kellen, is an assistant coach for the Houston program and his daughter, Lauren, is director for basketball operations.
And at least seven Indigenous women are also playing in the tournament, including Alissa Pili, Inupiaq/Native Hawaiian, from the University of Utah, and Lily Wahinekapu Lefotu, also Native Hawaiian, from the University of Hawaii, who are playing Friday, March 17.
who plays at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time Friday when Utah faces Gardner-Webb University from North Carolina, according to ndnsports.com.
The NCAA tournament started Thursday, with the first round creating several upsets in the men’s division, including a 59-55 win by 15th-seed Princeton University over the second-seeded University of Arizona.
The Bobcats are set to play Kansas at 9:40 p.m. Eastern time, with top-ranked Houston looking to face ninth-ranked Auburn at 7:10 p.m. Eastern on Saturday.
Battle, a junior from Tulalip, Washington, has had a great year for Montana State. The 6-foot-5 guard led the Bobcats in scoring on the team’s way to winning its second consecutive Big Sky Conference championship.
Battle hasn’t missed a start for Montana State all season and was named the conference tournament’s most valuable player. The latest award caps a season in which he was also a unanimous decision for the first-team All-Big Sky Conference team.
The Bobcats look to end a drought in the NCAA tournament for the Big Sky Conference, which has not secured a win since 2006. As the No. 14 seed last year, the Bobcats lost in the first round to Texas Tech University.
The Houston Cougars got off to a quick start Thursday, defeating Northern Kentucky Norse 63-52 in the first round of the tournament.
Read more:
—Making history: Indigenous coach leads nation’s top basketball team
The Cougars have been at or near the top of the rankings for most of the season, marking the first time an Indigenous coach has headed the number-one basketball team in the country.
Sampson is in his ninth season at the University of Houston, where the Cougars’ success this year has revived memories of the Phi Slama Jama team in the 1980s led by Hakeem Olajuwan.
Five other Indigenous women are set to play in the tournament on Saturday, March 18, starting at 2 p.m., according to ndnsports.com. They are:
- Lexy Keys, Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma State University
- Milan Schimmel, Umatilla, Florida Gulf Coast University
- Amari Deberry, Mohawk, University of Connecticut
- Jordana Reisma, Winnebago, Cleveland State University
- Aaliyah Nye, Potawatomi, University of Alabama
UPDATE: This story has been updated to add an additional Indigenous player in the NCAA tournament.
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