Hoopsters recall the Braves' 1988-89 title season

If you’d asked at the time, probably nobody would have guessed that the 1989 State AA boys’ basketball title would be the Flathead Braves’ last.

History would suggest otherwise, since the Braves’ five state titles are pretty spread out. Before ’89, the last championship came in 1982 with Doug Ellis and Scott Zanon – and that came a dozen years after the previous one, forged by Brent Wilson’s 51 points in the 1970 championship game.

And before that? Coach John Cheek’s back-to-back titles in 1950-51 with Dick Wilson and Gary Jystad.

But the late Bill Epperly won a ton of games as the Braves’ head coach, going 179-128 in 13 seasons (305-284 for his career). And his 1988-89 team was special: A great senior quintet of Eric Hilleboe, Dana Hashley, Jason Sonju, Craig Stotts and Lon Savik led the way. They were complemented by some very talented underclassmen, including sophomore Mark Gilman, who would later play tight end for Nebraska’s 1994-95 national champion football teams.

There were struggles on the court with Missoula Hellgate and Butte. Off the court there was an outbreak of the hard red measles that kept the Braves from playing any games until January. Then came a cold snap in February.

When it all was done Flathead cut down the nets, handing Butte its only loss, 53-50 at the Billings Metra on March 4, 1989. It is quite a story, and the Daily Inter Lake interviewed most of the principal players involved to relate it here.

ERIC HILLEBOE: We had a great team. Size, talent and speed. Every guy on that team was fast and I think that’s the asset that you can’t see in the stat line.

LON SAVIK: Hilleboe, Gilman and myself were on the 4-by-100 relay. We had the top time in the state but had a dropped handoff in divisionals.

HILLEBOE: Mark Gilman – one of the best athletes to come out of Montana. Kid could stroke it with the best of them.

MARK GILMAN: Here’s the deal with Savik – Lon Savik was a tremendous athlete. 6-foot-4, strong kid, state champion in 300 hurdles. Here’s a dude who went out and did all the dirty work. Rebounding, running around that zone. He’d get out on the break, he could guard anybody.

JASON SONJU: We all could jump. Who do you guard? Who do you want to shut down? Then you had Eric or Mark bringing the ball up – good luck trying to press them. And Eric wouldn’t lose. He never lost a jump. He had the longest arms I’ve never seen.

The 6-4 Gilman, who’d announced his arrival the year before with a 29-point game as a freshman, started. Another sophomore, 6-foot-8 reserve Travis Pine, was a key reserve. Junior guard Jason Monforton also came off the bench, along with either the sharp-shooting Stotts or Hashley.

Renny Hellickson was another sophomore reserve. Rounding out the team were – going by the team picture in Moran’s Roll of Champions – juniors Joel Anderson, Kerry O’Donnell and Mark Pirrie.

Gilman and Hilleboe worked the top of the Braves’ 2-3 zone defense – tough duty for opponents because Hilleboe’s wingspan was the same as Pine’s. Savik and the 6-3 Sonju were underneath, often with the 6-3 Hashley.

The crew was coming off a promising 1987-88 campaign in which the Braves finished third at state. Then the measles hit, and the Braves spent December playing each other, running “60s” – double suicide sprints in under 60 seconds – and honing a fast-break offense.

DANA HASHLEY: An organized fast break. We ran it every time the ball went through the hoop. That was my job – to throw the ball to Gilman, who was leaking down the right side of the court for layups or dunks.

RENNY HELLICKSON: Dana must have had 30 or 40 assists that year on that pass.

HASHLEY: We went Christmas caroling as a team, did fun stuff like that.

SAVIK: Epperly did a great job of keeping us engaged. We all went to a chili feed and we went caroling.

CRAIG STOTTS: That’s really how it started. When that quarantine got lifted, we were playing minimum three games a week. We knew we had a good team. We’d been playing together since we were kids.

GILMAN: It was nice to have a 6-8 kid coming off the bench. Perfect sixth man. And Stotts –just a great three-point shooter. (Laughs) He was a great golfer and a great shooter.

TRAVIS PINE: We were in damned good shape and we just ran teams to death. Eric would spearhead that and really read the floor well.

HELLICKSON: I have thought about that time quite a bit lately, because we really couldn’t leave the valley for about a month and half. We actually had a few guys on that team that had the measles that year, like (swing player) Bobby Moore. He lost 35 pounds.

Flathead began the season with wins over Class A opponents Libby, Whitefish and Columbia Falls and started the second week with a 78-50 win over Helena Capital. Then came back-to-back home losses to Missoula Hellgate (74-57) and Butte (76-72).

In the Butte game the Braves cut a 69-55 deficit to 71-68 before Butte’s Gary Kane converted a steal into a three-point play to cinch it with 41 seconds left.

GILMAN: One of the most fun, electric games I’ve ever played in. If I remember right there were six dunks in that game. Kane had one, I had a couple, Hilleboe had one. (Butte’s) Jasson McNallie, who high-jumped seven feet, had an unbelievable one. I almost wanted to high-five him.

HILLEBOE: I was sick to my stomach. We wanted it so bad and had a huge crowd – I mean standing room only-huge. Probably 2-3,000 people.

GILMAN: Back then, with no cell phones, it was the thing to do – people would meet at the gym and go figure out what to do afterwards. It’s just old school and tight. The fans are right on you. They were some of the best experiences of my life – and I played in 100,000-seat stadiums.

HILLEBOE: I remember (late activities director) Gene Boyle did this Braves cheer during a time out: He would raise his hands and everybody would stand – every single fan. He would start doing this Hoosier clap, this slow clap. Then he’d give a Tiger Woods fist pump and spell out B-R-A-V-E-S and the place would be so loud.

SONJU: It was wonderful. It was glorious. And it was the best $5 you spent. Every game there were slam dunks and 3-pointers. Always something to remember.

The Braves were 3-2 and unbeknown to them a pattern had been set: They won six straight games and then lost back-to-back at Hellgate (60-42) and Butte (57-54) in February. Hellgate was a problem, playing a deliberate style with big men Scott Brown and Matt Kempfert.

GILMAN: They would just stall the whole time. They would pass and cut and run it and then they would always make the danged shot after a minute. They shot an insane percentage.

HILLEBOE: (Hellgate coach Eric) Hays was a good guy, too – he liked me and I respected him but I tell you, his slow style of basketball drove us Braves nuts.

HELLICKSON: Hellgate definitely had our number that year. They had a great little guard (Cam Higgins) that could really shoot.

AA sub-zero cold snap paralyzed the state and forced the postponement of Feb. 2-3 games with Whitefish and Columbia Falls. The Braves were cooling their heels again, but were still able to pick up where they left off. On Jan. 28 they thumped Missoula Sentinel 105-89; the next game on Feb. 7 was a 108-75 win over Helena High.

HASHLEY: That’s when I met my wife (the former Sissy Dasen was a JV cheerleader) – it was during that cold snap. We’ve been married 30 years.

JEFF EPPERLY: One of the hallmarks of my dad’s teams – when they were top three in the state, they always had guys who didn’t necessarily play a lot but practiced really well. That was this group in ‘89. They really competed well in practice.

JIM HAHN (assistant coach): Kids got pretty owly. They were fun-loving, kind of mischievous, good-hearted kids. They were just great friends with each other. They weren’t goof-offs, but they were fun-loving. They liked to play and were hard-nosed. And you know the saying: Getting thrown in the fire tempers you. You either burn up or get stronger.

EPPERLY: I think of all the bizarre things – this group overcame adversity and jelled. The personalities really meshed and it allowed them to play their best ball at the end. And the one player I remember the most is Hilleboe in terms of leading from out front and being really competitive. I called him the Big Nasty: extra physical, he’d bump guys and bother them. And then Mark really played well off Eric.

SAVIK: Hilleboe was a good leader. He’d get on you, though I don’t think he had to do that much – we were all competitive. And he never lost a tip all year.

Butte continued to roll. With the 6-4 Kane, who was headed to the University of Montana for basketball, 6-2 Todd Ericson (who wore the famed No. 37 jersey for the football Grizzlies) and 6-6 McNallie the Bulldogs didn’t seem to care what style their opponent played.

Flathead closed the regular season 13-4, then thumped Helena Capital 63-47 and Missoula Big Sky 70-62 at the Western AA Divisional in Butte. The Capital game stands out.

HASHLEY: A lot of us could dunk on our team – like seven of us.

SONJU: We were out doing warm ups. We’re getting cute, throwing them down. I lay down a nice crowd-pleasing dunk and get T’d up. I looked over and there were the refs. Here’s what kind of coach Bill Epperly was: He says, “Sonju, you’re not starting. You might not even play the first half.” Now the National Anthem is playing. Folks are starting to watch. Starting lineups are introduced and they call my name and I’m looking at Bill, like, “Do I go?” He’s like, “GET OUT THERE YOU’RE STARTING.”

HASHLEY: The highlight was against Helena Capital. Savik – he gets a steal and has two guys on him and he just throws down a monster dunk.

SAVIK: We’d lost to Hellgate twice that year, and they played a slow-down game and Capital tried to do the same thing. We started off with a technical. We were down 2-0, and I don’t think we scored until five minutes in. I got a steal and dunked it. That was kind of a momentum changer.

STOTTS: Lon – he was kind of quiet, and then all of a sudden he would make huge plays. They were holding the ball for the first four minutes of the game. It was like 0-0 and one of their guards threw the ball away and Lon took it down and had a two-handed slam and got fouled on the play. All these moments seemed to gravitate toward him.

The Bulldogs and Braves met for the divisional championship. Butte built a 70-56 lead with 1:06 left; the final was 70-61. Kane scored 19 on what was his 18th birthday.

SONJU: What was cool about Butte is they could play at everybody’s pace. Hellgate played really slow, with those two big guys down low. We were so fast-paced – that’s the only thing we knew.

HILLEBOE: I think we were frustrated because we didn’t play our best game. But we already knew we were going to state – we were locked in, right? We were arrogant, cocky teenage boys.

SONJU: I think we could man up with Butte even though McNallie was 6-6. Gary Kane was just a great shooter and so was Todd against that zone. You could slow them down a little bit but that team didn’t have a lot of weaknesses.

GILMAN: I know Coach Epperly said, “Hey, we’re going to play them again, and it’s really hard to beat a great team four times in a row. We’re going to beat them when it counts.” I remember my dad saying the same thing. It hurt, though. We knew we had the talent. It gave us incentive to get to that state championship and give it another shot.

Meanwhile, Hellgate surprisingly went 0-2 at the divisional. Butte, Flathead, Missoula Big Sky and Missoula Sentinel headed to state, where Flathead beat Great Falls 86-68 in the first round. Butte, meanwhile, struggled with Billings West and needed a buzzer-beating, 24-foot jumper from Kane to prevail 58-55.

SONJU: He actually banked it in. I remember thinking to myself, did he mean to do that? He was Gary Kane, so you couldn’t question him.

GARY KANE: No. That baby was clean.

GILMAN: I think that might be one of those classic cases where all the pressure on them and none on CMR. God, I’m glad Butte won that game. We wanted to play them again.

KANE: That said, I was so (mad) at myself that night. I hit that and thought. “You lucky…. Don’t put yourself in that position again.”

Butte beat Big Sky 65-52 in the semifinals while Flathead handled Billings West 75-58. That set up the fourth matchup. It was a low-scoring game that seemed to turn when Flathead, down six points, switched from its 2-3 zone defense to a man-to-man midway through the third quarter. Hilleboe, who’d scored 31 and 25 points in the first two games at state, finished with just eight. So did Gilman. Kane, meanwhile, scored 25.

HILLEBOE: It was a defensive battle. These were athletic kids that knew each other well – that knew each other’s tendencies.

HASHLEY: Eric had so many penetrations where people helped on him, and he’d find Sonju or Savik for easy buckets.

TODD ERICSON: We were obviously confident, but we knew it was going to be a tough team to beat. We would rather have played anybody else besides Kalispell given that it as the fourth time we were playing them.

The final moments were tense: Sonju converted a three-point play for a 48-45 Flathead lead; Fritz Daily did the same to put Butte in front 49-48. Kane hit a free throw for a 50-48 lead with 3:20 left – Butte’s last point.

Savik, who poured in 21 points, tied the game and provided a key defensive play before Gilman – who was 3-for-9 from the floor at that point – drained a 19-footer with 1:56 remaining to put Flathead up 52-50.

GILMAN: I did hit that one. Thank God.

HELLICKSON: Savik was unbelievable. They got a steal and had a 2-on-1 break, Fritz Daily and somebody – he drew Savik up to stop the ball, passed to Daily for the layup and Savik came out of nowhere to block it off the backboard.

SAVIK: Kane was bringing the ball up and I got in front of him, stopped the ball, and he passed it to Fritz Daily. Side step, and I got enough height to where I blocked the shot and cleared him. Renny loves telling that story.

Butte missed a free throw with 42 seconds left and then was faced with putting Flathead on the line. Trouble was the Bulldogs had just one team foul – they had to commit six more to get the Braves in the bonus. Hashley repeatedly had to inbound safely to a teammate, who was quickly fouled. Eventually Sonju coaxed in a free throw with 9 seconds left. A final desperation shot by Butte missed. The Bulldogs were 21-1.

STOTTS: Curtis Smith got the rebound and I remember being right there when he shot it from three-quarter court. It hit the rim.

HILLEBOE: I fouled out with a minute to go. We were ahead at the time. Craig Stotts came in and hadn’t played much, if at all. This is a very intense time. I grabbed him by the shoulders and said, “You’re the man.” And he said, “I know.” (Laughs) And it was just very comforting to hear that.

STOTTS: Eric actually told that story at my wedding at my wedding. As my best man. That’s exactly how it happened.

ERICSON: What I remember from that gave is that Hilleboe had a lot of assists and their big guys had a lot of layups.

KANE: I had a moment where everything stopped. It dawned on me with about 20 seconds left that, “You’re not going to be able to win this.” I remember I started fast and rolled the whole game, pretty much. I carried as much of the load as I could, but I still felt I failed the team. I shot a million jump shots but I really remember all the ones I missed in big games.

Kane and Ericson had little time to feel sorry – each had to prepare for competing in college. The Braves, though, have kept the celebration going for 31 years. Hilleboe was the tournament MVP. Epperly would coach Flathead four more seasons before retiring from teaching in 1993. He passed away June 29, 2017.

KANE: We lost to a good team with good players, especially Eric and Mark. But that year – that was the one game that we were denied. And it was the one game that counted. Life goes on, but when you’re 18 it’s different.

PINE: Getting on the fire truck and riding through town and seeing how many people showed up, and you’re a 15-year-old kid it was like, “Holy crap.” What a fun time. Coming home and seeing the entire come out – that’s when it really dawned on me. Basketball was a lot of fun for me, but I didn’t really understand how big a deal it was until we came back from state.

HASHLEY: I remember the support we had we came back into town. There was a parade, and people came to the gym just to congratulate us. That was so cool – because not many people went to Billings, to the game. A lot of Butte fans were there, of course. But not many from Kalispell.

HELLICKSON: I’ve been telling Hilleboe ever since that Savik should be the MVP. Hilleboe’s comment is always, “The people have spoken.”

HASHLEY: The coaches never get enough credit. They just had a huge role in this all. It was a just a great way to play. We spent a lot of time xs and os, working on our zone defense, and we had some great coaches, including Jim Hahn and Fred Merrick.

GILMAN: I want to put some praise Epperly’s way. I think he rally realized the raw talent and the knowledge we had. He gave us a lot of room. You watch coaches these days and they have a lot of reins on their players. I see that today. Epperly realized what we had and let us play.