Wildcats Strike: Columbia Falls’ first boys basketball title 20 years ago didn’t come easy

It’s hard to believe now that Columbia Falls, despite graduating ample basketball talent through the years — Cary Finberg, Mike Caldwell and the late Craig Finberg quickly come to mind — had not won a boys basketball state championship before 2003.

The Wildcats were runners up to Big Sandy in Class C in 1959, to Great Falls High in Class A in 1965 and to the Poplar Indians at the 1975 State A tournament.

Craig Finberg was the star player on that 1975 team, ahead of a standout career at Montana State. Time was running down in a tie championship game when he brought the ball up for what should have been a final possession for Columbia Falls. With no baseline clocks in Great Falls’ Four Seasons Arena, Finberg looked up at the overhead scoreboard — and had the ball stolen for a title-winning layup. Poplar 80, Columbia Falls 78.

In the crowd that night was Cary Finberg, Craig’s younger brother by nine years. He remembers that tournament well.

“The game that blew me away was the Poplar-Browning semifinal,” Finberg said. “It was bleeping crazy. I remember being a 9- or 10-year-kid, and thinking: ‘This is what I want to do.’”

Twenty-eight years later Finberg coached the Wildcats to that elusive state championship.

Twenty years have passed since, along with four more boys’ state titles. But they say the first title is the hardest, and Columbia Falls would be proof. Coming off an encouraging third-place finish at the 2002 State A tournament, the Wildcats seemed poised for a very successful season. It didn’t start out that way.

The Daily Inter Lake interviewed many of the main characters from 2003 — twins Jeremy and Jesse Grilley, point guard Eric Backes, forward Tyler Jones and of course Finberg — for this oral history, which really starts in 1996.

TYLER JONES: Cary came over when we were in junior high. We were in sixth grade. He sat us down, and we were in the old gym, the wood gym. He said, "There’s a lot of potential in this class, and it’s going to be hard work. But I can see you as state champions." That’s the first time we looked at each other and thought, wow, we could be good.

CARY FINBERG: When I was named the head coach in ‘97, 98, whenever it was, they were sixth graders. I started the Little Dribbler program, and that group was the first Little Dribbler guys, and yeah, I knew there was potential.

ERIC BACKES: Sixth grade was when Tyler joined our school. I’d already been playing with Darin (Nau) — we lived across the street from each other — and played with the Grilleys, and that was the first thing we talked about all the time. We kind of had high expectations of ourselves.

FINBERG: My three years as JV coach the varsity team went 8-52. We were pretty rock bottom. We weren’t good. I remember my first quote in the paper was, "Hey, I’m just trying to bring respectability back to the Columbia Falls program." My first year, we went to state, and I had good kids. Christopher (Finberg, nephew) was one of my kids, and Dirk Johnsrud. Josh Fields, who played AAA baseball.

If the following seasons weren’t quite as successful, the Wildcats were building. In 2002 — with 6-foot-7 Matt Beckwith in the pivot — they surged to a third–place finish at the State A, beating Belgrade 58-46 in the consolation game. Beckwith was the only senior starter on that 15-11 squad, so while the Wildcats got noticeably smaller, with no one over 6-2, they still had high-scoring Darin Nau leading four returning starters.

They opened the 2002-03 season in Livingston, handling Butte Central and topping Craig Finberg’s Dillon Beavers. Then they lost to Flathead 56-55 in Columbia Falls, and dropped an 82-77 decision at Corvallis. Wins over Bigfork, Ronan and Whitefish were encouraging; a 64-54 defeat at Libby was not, and was the first of four losses in five games.

JEREMY GRILLEY: We had a lot of egos going into our senior year. Me, my brother and Darin and Tyler. I think our egos kind of got in the way early, and we weren’t playing together. I think everyone was trying to get their own. We had ulterior motives that had us playing more selfishly.

JESSE GRILLEY: We were going pretty good and then we got a reality check. We just kind of sat down and talked about how the season was going and what we were doing. It became a reality that we didn’t have the record we wanted… but the end goal was still there. The state title isn’t a gimme, and there’s a lot of talent in the West and the state.

JONES: We faltered pretty hard. I don’t think it was out of overconfidence. I think it was not being used to that position. Then we had a little setback: We got in trouble as a group messing around on a bus. We lost in Libby and we were coming back and were screwing around, and I remember Cary yelling at us: “I will stop this bus, and we will run back to town in the headlights.”

We ended up getting in trouble for some hazing.

FINBERG: There was stuff that came up, things we found out about later, after the bus ride was over. And again, I was trying to establish a new culture, establish the right way to do things. The administration and I got together and we just felt it was best to suspend those kids for a game.

That game was at home against Polson. The Pirates won, 73-60.

JONES: Polson shouldn’t have beat us and they beat us. It was like, “All right, we’re coming back.”

FINBERG: And I think it was part of those guys deciding how we wanted to do things. There was just something missing early in the year. Our third place finish the year before — I just thought our kids felt like this is just going to happen, and it doesn’t work that way.

JEREMY GRILLEY: We never lost any tournaments that summer before our senior year, and won the opening weekend tournament. At that point I think our egos got in the way and we got distracted.

JONES: It took something like that to wake us up. If anything good came out of it, it was an opportunity to grow. We’re running through our senior season, it’s going quick, and it’s not where we wanted to be.

FINBERG: It was an instant, “Yeah, we need to refocus.” I was proud of how they handled the situation, because it could have gone one of two ways. I thought they handled it the right way, and that’s what I was hoping for.

Things didn’t turn around right away: The Wildcats won at Hamilton, but then Libby came to Columbia Falls and built a 42-22 lead and held on, 66-62. The next night, Jan. 17, the Wildcats went to Kalispell and saw Flathead’s Colter Smith bury eight 3-pointers in an 83-72 Braves’ win. Columbia Falls was 6-6.

JONES: I do remember Colter Smith. I remember as an eighth grader he was dunking.

BACKES: Darin and I, it was after our last loss and we were kind of joking around saying, “Yeah we lost another but watch, we’ll win the rest of our games.”

The Wildcats did exactly that, using a withering matchup zone to tear off 12 straight victories. This happened under the specter of a parents’ petition to remove Finberg as coach, though it’s unclear to him if that was the 2002-03 season or before (a Billings Gazette article noted it happened in 2002-03).

FINBERG: That petition basically came up with kids that had been dismissed the previous few years. But again, the program as a whole was not established, and I ran into problems of discipline with kids that I was not going to put up with. I dismissed kids from the program, and kids quit, and there were parents who had kids dismissed and they got mad.

JONES: That was a bummer, but for us on that team, it was a small blip. Cary handled it professionally, and off we went.

FINBERG: I’ve always had good support from the administration. I think the petition was there; it never got any wheels. I think our administration shot it down.

The streak began with a 95-77 win over Bigfork in which Nau poured in 35 points. A week later at Whitefish Nau scored 34. And the defense was a problem for opponents.

JESSE GRILLEY: Our style of play from freshman year to senior slowly changed. It was more a 2-3 zone our junior year, and senior year more of a matchup.

FINBERG: We had some kids that were smart and had the understanding to do it. Eric Backes, that kid — you have kids who can impact a game getting zero, one or two points. He set the tone for us. He took care of the basketball, got it to our playmakers. We had every piece in place to play our matchup zone, and it was fun to play. We could do three or four different things out of it.

JEREMY GRILLEY: We set the all-time team single-season steals record; Tyler and Jesse and I finished 1-2-3 for a season.

FINBERG: They were 1-2-3 at that time, but that was five years into my career. Tyler Jones is still the leader for my 19 years coaching the boys. And that team still leads in (single-season) steals. The other part of that was they were by far the assist leaders of any team I had.

Columbia Falls hosted the Western A Divisional, which was no guarantee of success: The Wildcats hadn’t won a divisional crown since 1990, and had gone 0-2 at the last three times they hosted. But they handled Bigfork 60-53 with five players in double figures. The next night Nau — shaking off flu-like systems the night before — scored 26 of his 28 points while the Cats built a 65-38 lead after three quarters. Corvallis star Shea Bradshaw, who scored 29 in an early-season win over C-Falls, had one point.

BACKES: What I remember is guarding (Bradshaw) the entire game and he had one point, right before halftime, right after I came out of the game. I hung my hat on defense.

Next up: Libby. The Loggers led a good part of the game before Nau and Jeremy Grilley hit layups to put Columbia Falls up 53-50 in the final minute. Libby’s Jake Swartzendruber had a 3-pointer rattle out with 12 seconds left, and the final was 55-50. Logger star Kyle Stantus sprained an ankle the night before, though Libby coach Wally Winslow said, “I don’t want you to make it sound like we lost because we didn’t have Kyle Stantus. We lost because Columbia Falls outplayed us.”

JESSE GRILLEY: That’s what made Libby so good, they had really good people that didn’t start because they were so deep.

JEREMY GRILLEY: Corvallis had Shea Bradshaw, the conference’s leading scorer, and I think we held him (down). We started feeling really good, like we were playing to our potential. Then when we felt like we had a shot at the state championship is when we beat Libby. We went into state on an all-time high on belief, and really felt good about how we were playing.

FINBERG: We played Corvallis, who had the Bradshaw kid, and we held him to one point. Then we played Libby, which had beaten us twice during the regular season, in the championship and got them. I knew at that point we were pretty dangerous.

State was in Belgrade, and Nau scored 26 in the Wildcats’ opening 67-58 win over Colstrip. The next night he had 22 in a 67-57 win over Browning — which had won 10 straight games on that court, including the last two State A titles — in the semis. Next up was Billings Central, playing in its fourth title game in 10 seasons.

JEREMY GRILLEY: It was cool. … We were walking into the locker room and Craig Finberg had written a huge message on our marker board. A very inspirational message.

CARY FINBERG: Just something to the effect of, "You’re more than capable of winning it. As a Columbia Falls graduate, I’m proud of you guys. Go get the first one."

Billings Central beat Libby 67-61 in the semifinals behind 30 points from point guard Cooper Warren. Against Columbia Falls the taller Rams ruled the boards 36-19, and Nau would pick up three fouls in the first 3:24 of the game, but the Wildcats still led 28-23 halftime. They forced 23 turnovers — Backes had five steals and Jones four — and held Warren to five points.

The Rams almost nearly pulled off a miracle win when Warren just missed a put-back while getting fouled at the end of regulation: He made both free throws to force overtime, but Central wouldn’t score in OT. Columbia Falls won, 53-47. Jesse Grilley, the Wildcats’ “center,” had 19 points. Jones had 12. Nau scored 10, all in the second half.

JEREMY GRILLEY: (Nau) picked up his third foul four, five or six minutes in. It was kind of a funny story with that situation. We had noticed throughout the year, when Darin was either in foul trouble or taken out of the game, we had a lot of other people step up. It kind of freed them up a little bit.

FINBERG: We rolled the dice … Don’t get me wrong, my first initial thought was, ‘Oh crap.’ But again credit those other kids for picking us up and getting us that (halftime) lead.

JESSE GRILLEY: They got the tip (in overtime) and I remember they ran a minute, a minute-30 — I don’t remember, but they held the ball quite a bit with that first possession. I don’t know if it was by plan, but it kind of helped us get our feet back under us.

FINBERG: We’d played them in a loser-out game to get to the third-fourth (in 2002). I think they led us 26-10 at the end of the first. We came back and ended up beating them by 9 or 10. It was a comfort level of playing them the next year, after we’d played them before and beat them.

JONES: I think that is a true testament to our true style of play back then. It wasn’t all finesse and beauty. It was a lot of grit and hard work. We were an undersized team for sure. I don’t think there was one person on our team, including our coaches, who thought we were done (in OT). “We’re here, we might as well win.”

BACKES: We knew it was going to happen the whole time. That’s just the way we felt about it. That might sound a little conceited, but that’s just the way we felt about ourselves. Late nights at Tyler’s house, just battling in his garage.

Backes, the Grilleys and Jones all live in the Flathead Valley. Nau resides in Williston, North Dakota. Finberg resigned as boys coach in 2015 (his nephew Chris is now the coach) and still coaches the Wildkat girls.

JONES: I’ve had a great strong relationship with Cary my whole career. I’ve gone to him for advice about many things. He saw something in us and held us accountable, not for his own personal gains but for what we could be.

BACKES: I can’t even count the hours. The amount of work and preparation you put into it.

FINBERG: Changing the culture was a lot harder than changing the talent level. That group of kids was the ones that kind of changed the culture for the future successes that we had. And they actually had probably the hardest part: They had to kick the door down; they actually had to do it. Not that the other state championships were easy, but that culture had not been established. That’s why that first championship is sometimes hard to do.

They were great kids, they weren’t problem kids, we just felt there was a certain culture we wanted to establish. And it worked out.

The 2002-03 Wildcats

Dec. 6 Butte Central W, 84-41

Dec. 7 Dillon W, 63-54

Dec. 12 Kalispell L, 55-56

Dec. 13 at Corvallis L, 82-77

Dec. 19 at Bigfork W, 61-57

Dec. 21 Ronan W, 70-57

Jan. 3 Whitefish W, 67-58

Jan. 4 at Libby L, 64-54

Jan. 10 Polson L, 73-60

Jan. 11 at Hamilton W, 59-53

Jan. 16 Libby L, 66-62

Jan. 17 at Kalispell L, 83-72

Jan. 23 Bigfork W, 95-77

Jan. 24 at Ronan W, 65-63

Jan. 30 at Whitefish W, 81-64

Feb. 7 Hamilton W, 53-49

Feb. 8 Stevi W, 63-49

Feb. 11 at Polson W, 72-66.

Divisionals, at C-Falls

Feb. 20 Bigfork W, 60-53

Feb. 21 Corvallis W, 85-53

Feb. 22 Libby W, 55-50

State, at Belgrade

March 6 Colstrip W, 67-58

March 7 Browning W, 67-57

March 8 Billings Central W, 53-47 OT