Women's Basketball | 03/02/25 | 9:53 AM
HELENA, Mont. - The Carroll College Basketball teams will officially start postseason play on Sunday, as both play opening round games of the Frontier Conference Tournament at the Pacific Steel & Recycling Arena in Great Falls. The Women will take on Montana Western at 3 p.m., with the Men drawing the nightcap against MSU-Northern at 7 p.m.
March is here, and postseason basketball kicks off today in the Electric City. The Fighting Saints finished tied for second place in the league standings on both the Men's and Women's side of the action, and both teams are the No. 3-seed in their respective tournaments.
The Carroll Women faltered down the stretch of the regular season, dropping three late season games to fall from the top of the standings. A win over MSU-Northern in the season finale, and a full week of rest and preparation has the Saints feeling good about their chances of winning their fifth Frontier Conference Tournament in the last eight seasons.
A pair of guards,
Willa Albrecht (Billings, Mont. / R-JR) and
Kyndall Keller (Havre, Mont. / R-SR) led the Saints in scoring during the regular season, averaging 14.7 points per game. Both players were Preseason All-Conference selections, and have each made very strong cases for postseason honors with their strong play throughout the year.
The third-seeded Saints will open the tournament against the sixth-seeded Bulldogs of Montana Western at 3 p.m. Carroll won all three of the regular season meetings between the two schools this season, including a pair of road wins in Dillon. Dating back to 2021, the Saints are winners of 18-straight in the series, and will aim to keep the streak intact with an opening round win this evening.
The winner of this afternoon's game will advance to play the No. 2 seed Providence tomorrow afternoon at 2 p.m.
On the Men's side of the action, the Saints enter the postseason as the league's hottest team. After starting the conference slate 0-3 Carroll has gone 9-3 over the last month-plus, coming within one game of the Frontier regular season title.
There are a number of reasons for the rapid rise in the standings through the back half of conference play, but one is the outstanding play of
Isaiah Crane (Portland, Ore. / R-FR). The shifty guard led the Frontier Conference in scoring, entering the postseason with a league-best 18.4 ppg average. Crane's ability to knock down shots when it matters most helped secure him the scoring crown, making it three straight seasons in which a Saint has led the conference in scoring ('23 & '24 -
Andrew Cook).
While finishing tied for second in the standings, the Saints will play as the three seed due to a tiebreaker owned by Providence. Carroll will open their postseason push with a rematch from their regular season finale, playing sixth-seeded MSU-Northern for the second time in eight days. The Saints won all three previous meetings with the Lights this season, including last weekend's comeback 59-55 win in Havre.
The Men's game is slated to tip at 7 p.m., and the winner will advance to play No. 2-seed Providence tomorrow night at 9 p.m.
The entire Frontier tournament will be held at the Pacific Steel & Recycling Arena in Great Falls over the next three days, and tickets for the event are available at the arena box office.
Both games will be streamed on the Frontier Conference YouTube channel
HERE, and can be seen on Montana SWX stations.
Catch Stewart Davis and Carroll Hall of Famer, Gary Turcott, call the action live on Rewind 94.9 FM, or online
HERE.
Live stats for the Women can be found
HERE, and live stats for the Men
HERE.
Visit www.carrollathletics.com this evening for a full recap of the action, and to stay up to date on everything going on in Carroll Athletics.
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#MarchOn
