There’s a sports documentary out there that’s a “must-see” for basketballers. And it’s not from ESPN, or Netflix, or HBO.
It’s from PBS—our Public Broadcasting System. Yes. The same network that gave us Ken Burns’ Baseball. It’s a basketball documentary entitled Playing Like a Girl: The House that Rob Built. Completed in 2020, this Emmy Award-winning production chronicles how University of Montana basketball alum Rob Selvig took over that school’s women’s hoop team in 1978 when there wasn’t even an NCAA women’s tournament. Selvig turned the Lady Griz program into a national power, compiling a lifetime coaching record of 865-286 before retiring in 2016. The program won 18 Big Sky Conference regular season titles, and Selvig won 15 (fifteen!) Coach-of-the-Year awards.
Part of the story involves how Selvig stayed put when he could have gone to many other places. His Montana male hoop team counterpart, Jud Heathcote, went from Montana to Michigan State, where he won a national championship with Magic Johnson. But the biggest part of the story involves the unique women’s basketball culture that developed in Missoula. The Lady Griz family was special, and over the decades, its members indeed became “sisters.” That Selvig recruited indigenous Native American players from Montana Indian reservations only made the story more compelling.
The Lady Griz saga was “Hoosier-like” in that a remote, small-school basketball program somehow became a champion. Eventually, Montana hosted national women’s powers like Stanford and Tennessee in NCAA post-season action, games where every inch of the arena was filled with screaming Griz fans.
Which brings us to the Granite State.
Consider that the population of Montana is only 1.1 million, to New Hampshire’s 1.4 million. So why can’t we have nice things here, hoop-wise? We do have a wonderful high school basketball tradition.
No University of New Hampshire women’s hoop team has EVER been to the NCAAs. And neither has any UNH men’s team. The UNH’s men’s hoop program is arguably the nation’s worst Division I program historically. UNH had some winning seasons in the 1920s, but since then, it’s largely been a cumulative embarrassment.
One supposes that any program can have a bad century.
What’s especially galling is that our neighbors from the University of Vermont (the Catamounts) and the University of Maine (the Black Bears) occasionally have great teams. Both Maine and Vermont have been to the NCAAs multiple times and have even had some successes there. Vermont once upset powerhouse Syracuse at the big dance. And Maine once beat Stanford.
Consider that Vermont knocked the UNH men out of the conference playoffs (again!) last season. Vermont usually kicks our butts. And Vermont is a socialist state (kind of) with half our population!
Galling indeed!
Between the UNH men’s and women’s basketball programs, we have around 200 years of collective basketball postseason futility.
So, watching The House that Rob Built was concurrently inspiring and infuriating.
Why can’t we have nice things in New Hampshire? Who ticked off the basketball gods? Why are we so cursed? We’ll probably see men on Mars before we see UNH hoopsters in the NCAAs.
Maybe someday, our Wildcats will get an invite to the Big Dance. And if some of us oldsters live to see it, then, yes, we’ll unashamedly jump on the UNH bandwagon.
Of course.
In the meantime, check out The House that Rob Built.
