MSU ATHLETICS<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\nBOZEMAN\u2014Montana State finished a 23-win regular season and Bobcat guard\u00a0Taylee Chirrick\u00a0made history as MSU topped Northern Arizona 68-48 in Bozeman on Monday.\u00a0
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The Bobcats finished the league\u00a0portion\u00a0of the 2025-26 schedule with a 23-6 overall mark, and a 16-2 Big Sky Conference record good for second place after Idaho beat Eastern Washington on Monday to clinch sole possession of the regular season title. MSU opens Big Sky Tournament play on Sunday, March 8, against the winner of Saturday\u2019s NAU-Montana game.\u00a0
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Montana State exerted itself defensively on Monday, holding NAU to 34 percent shooting while forcing 32 Lumberjacks turnovers. As always, Chirrick was the tip of the spear defensively for MSU. She\u00a0came up with\u00a0seven steals, raising her season total to 124. That ties both the Montana State and Big Sky Conference single-season record of 124, held for 37 years by former Bobcat Liz Holz (1988-89).\u00a0
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\u201cI don\u2019t think she had any idea\u201d she was close to the record, Binford said of Chirrick. \u201cWhen I put her back in the game (in the fourth quarter) I told her, just get a steal, you\u2019re one away. Usually I tell her, \u2018You have one minute,\u2019 but this time I told her to get a steal.\u201d\u00a0
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\u201cI\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0really sure\u00a0where I was at and (Binford) said, \u2018Try and get one more and then\u00a0you\u2019ll\u00a0tie it. She put me back in the game to do that, so that was really nice of her,\u201d Chirrick said.\u00a0
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The first quarter unfolded as a sluggish affair. The Cats outscored NAU 14-5, but the teams combined to convert just eight of 33 field goal attempts. When\u00a0Jamison Philip\u00a0made a layup with 3:25 to play in the second quarter, MSU led 28-9. But a Naomi White three-pointer started\u00a015-4 run to close the half and draw Northern Arizona within 33-24.\u00a0
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The scoring\u00a0run\u00a0that NAU began late in the first half spilled into the second. The Lumberjacks scored the first nine points of the third quarter, and when White hit a pullup jumper at 7:22 Northern Arizona tied the score.\u00a0
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The Lumberjacks got a stop and\u00a0possessed\u00a0with the chance to take the lead, but\u00a0a steal\u00a0by\u00a0Addison Harris\u00a0and runout by\u00a0Addison Harris\u00a0led to her hitting a layup, then Issy Bunyan drained a three-pointer and Chirrick made a layup to trigger what became a 17-0 run. Montana State led 50-33 after\u00a0Kadynce Couture\u2019s\u00a0three-pointer, and NAU never seriously threatened again.\u00a0
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In addition to the seven\u00a0steals\u00a0Chirrick scored 16 points and grabbed seven rebounds.\u00a0Ella Johnson\u2019s\u00a0nine rebounds led all players, and she added three steals. White\u2019s 21 points led all players, and she added four steals for the Lumberjacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taylee Chirrick ties MSU, Big Sky\u00a0single-season\u00a0steals record in front of home crowd\u00a0 By\u00a0Bill Lamberty\u00a0MSU ATHLETICS\u00a0 BOZEMAN\u2014Montana State finished…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":{"0":"post-202346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-sacramento","9":"tag-sacramento-headlines","10":"tag-sacramento-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}