HELENA, Mont. – Five years before their Frontier Conference championship game in Salt Lake City, J.D. Solomon sat in his living room in Billings and talked with Carroll College head coach Gary Turcott.
 
The veteran coach didn't blow smoke in his recruiting pitch; he was honest with the Billings Senior standout, making it clear he wouldn't see the court his first year and, despite his potential, was a long way from cracking the Saints' starting lineup.
 
The message would have dismayed a lot of recruits, especially ones with Division I size and athleticism, but Solomon saw honesty where other interested coaches just told him what he wanted to hear.
 
"Coach Turcott was and is to this very day an intense person," Solomon said. "He is the kind of person that didn't beat around the bush. He didn't sugar coat things, he said he had a player in Guy Almquist who was one of the best players in school history and I was not going to beat him out for the starting spot. I knew exactly where I stood when I chose to come to Carroll. He was sometimes brutally honest but it was the truth and it made me a better basketball player."
 
Solomon was one piece of a puzzle that would form a record breaking 2000-01 Carroll men's basketball team. That team was inducted into the Carroll Athletics Hall of Fame last fall and they will again be honored Friday before the Saints' 7:30 p.m. tipoff against the University of Great Falls.
 
The team won more games than any in Carroll history to that point. The season ended in a heartbreaking loss that stings those involved to this day but by every measure it was the best Carroll team to date.
 
The Saints concluded the regular season with a 23-5 record overall, including a 10-2 conference record. Carroll finished second to Westminster in the final standings but the Saints believed they were the better team.
 
"It was probably up to that point the most talented team that we had coached here," Turcott said. "We had the best point guard in the league in Shane Gamradt, we had the best power forward in the league in J.D. Solomon, and we had two all-conference players in the wings, Kirk Stiles and Gary Lynch. And then we just had a really supportive, aggressive, deep bench."
 
The collection of talent started with strong guard play. Lynch and Stiles was the best 2-3 guard combo in the league but they were more than just great shooters. They were complete players that helped their teammates succeed.
 
"Both are known as lockdown shooters that spread the floor and made scoring inside easier, but both also fulfilled many other roles," Solomon said. "Lynch was the best rebounding guard I ever played with, and Stiles was always forced to defend the other team's best offensive guard. They definitely played larger roles in our team's success than just being Hall of Fame caliber shooters."
 
The glue that held the team together was Gamradt. The point guard led the nation in assists at 7.8 a game and earned Honorable Mention All-American recognition. Solomon believes that there is no way the Saints would have reached the heights they did as a team without Gamradt's leadership.
 
"Shane was the catalyst," Solomon said. "He was the most important player we had. He is the smartest player that I have ever played with. His court vision was great he did all the hard work and we had easy shots. Playing with him at point guard was a lot of fun and we wouldn't have had nearly the success without him running the show."
 
"He was magic with the ball and we had a great transition game," Turcott said "J.D. could really run the floor. He would get out and run down the middle and we had Stiles on the right wing and Lynch on the left, two pure three point shooters. You put Shane in that setting and he was like a magician. He was only 5-7 or 5-8 but he was an unbelievable passer. He had like eyes in the back of his head."
 
Solomon for his efforts wasn't the same kid, sitting in the living room in Billings talking to coach Turcott. He blossomed into an elite level player that averaged 20.2 points and 7.7 rebounds per game and Turcott believes would have been a big time player at many Division I schools.
 
"J.D. was a tremendous player," Turcott said. "I looked at what Montana or Montana State had on their rosters around that time and I thought, he could be a Big Sky All-Conference player. He was that good. He wasn't that good when he started but he put in a lot of effort."
 
Carroll opened the conference tournament against Rocky Mountain and punished the bears for en route to a 84-66 win. In the semifinals of the conference tournament, the Saints snuck by Montana Western on a dunk at the buzzer by Solomon. The win set up a match up with the Saints and a Westminster team whose lone conference loss came at the hands of the Saints in Helena.
 
The Griffins snuck past Carroll 82-79 in Salt Lake City in the first regular-season meeting of the year but in the return game Carroll rolled to a 21-point victory.
 
"We felt like we were the better team," Solomon said. "They barely won down there and when we played them again in Helena we blew their doors off. We got the chance to play them down there for the championship, we were excited. It was a lot of motivation to cut down nets on their home court."
 
A large Carroll contingent made the seven-hour trek to Utah for the championship game, turning the usually sparse crowd to a raucous atmosphere.
 
"They normally don't draw a crowd," Turcott said. "They had a huge crowd that night for them. It was really loud and we just had a lot of guys play well. It wasn't just one or two guys, but a lot of guys played well."
 
The game was a battle from the tip and the Saints led by one with just seconds on the clock when Kirk Stiles stripped the ball away from Frontier Player of the Year Mitch Montgomery and was fouled. He nailed a pair of free throws to seal the 78-75 victory.
 
"We had a one-point lead and they had the ball and they had Montgomery, an All-American player, with the ball in his hands," Turcott said. "He was going to go one and one and shoot a three and Kirk stripped him when he tried to cross over. He went down and they fouled kirk with no time left. It was a great defensive play and I think we really shocked Westminster, they had a great team and Montgomery was the MVP of the league."
 
"It was a great game back and forth," Solomon said. "Both teams made great plays but when Kirk made that last play and we got the win, it was absolutely crazy. We were in the stands, high-fiving our fans and friends and family. It was really exciting."
 
The Saints, ranked No. 18 after the conference tournament, earned the 11th seed and faced No. 20 Oklahoma Baptist in the first round of the NAIA Tournament held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, just 90 minutes down the road from OBU's home base of Shawnee.
 
Led by Solomon, the Saints dominated the early going and built a 16-point lead.
 
"We had a lead the whole game and really dominated and J.D. just had a tremendous game, he had three dunks," Turcott said. "We had a sizable lead with four or five minutes to go and we missed some free throws and lost some momentum and they got the momentum and we did have a couple of really bad calls go against us at the end, but bad calls go against you when you lose your momentum."
 
The Bison seized the opportunity and the Saints couldn't recover as OBU clawed their way to the 72-69 comeback win.
 
"The wheels fell off, and then they didn't just fall off, they went rolling right past us," Solomon said. "It was really, really disappointing. One of coach Turcott's goals was to win a national tournament game and I wanted to be on a team that provided him that. I feel like I let him down when we didn't come through on that opportunity."
 
Oklahoma Baptist won in the next round to earn a trip to the quarterfinals where they lost 88-83 to Pikeville (Ky.). The blown lead is still a source of disappointment for both the players and coach Turcott.
 
"I'm still pretty bitter about it," Solomon said. "We had them in the bag and we didn't close it out, add to that to that the team that we lost to made it to the quarterfinals and lost in a close game. You do the math in your head and we were potentially a final four team."
 
"Oh it was a terrible loss, it took us a while to get over that loss," Turcott said. "The bad part was that we had never won a game at the national tournament. We had gone five times before we had ever won a game and that was the team of all the teams that lost back there, that was the best team that lost. We had to play the best team that we had ever played back there and we should have won it, should have won it."
 
The saints finished the season with the highest ranking in school history and Solomon received First-Team All-American Honors, the first Saint to reach that honor. Gamradt went on to earn the school's all-time assist record with 726 and Stiles broke the record for made 3-pointers, ending his career with 378.
 
Despite the frustrating end, the players and coaches really enjoyed the season and still communicate regularly.
 
"It was a lot of fun. We had a lot both playing ball and hanging out with each other," Solomon said. "We've kept close contact. We are really close years afterward and some of those guys are my best friends."
 
"I am proud of what we did on the court but I am also very proud of what those players did after their time here at Carroll," Turcott said. "There are a lot of high school and college coaches that played on that team and they are all pretty good quality people."