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Whitefish’s Revival

The Bulldogs' best season in a decade has come on the shoulders of two senior big men and an old-school coach with deep roots in the program

By Andy Viano
Dillon Botner looks for an open teammate during Whitefish basketball practice on Feb. 13, 2019. Greg Lindstrom | Flathead Beacon

Back when Scott Smith was a student at Whitefish High School, the boys basketball program was a powerhouse.

Julio Delgado was at the helm of the Bulldogs for 19 years before he resigned in 2000, and the vaunted coach led Whitefish to the state tournament 16 times during that stretch, including in 1991 when Delgado’s Bulldogs won the Class A state championship. That was Smith’s freshman year at Whitefish High, and after playing college football at Montana Western, he came back to his hometown and took a job as a physical education teacher. When Delgado briefly came out of retirement to coach Whitefish for the 2006-07 season, Smith joined him on the bench as an assistant coach.

The following season, Smith applied for the head-coaching job that went instead to Eric Stang, and while Stang led Whitefish to back-to-back state tournaments, he was ousted after just two seasons in charge.

The program has been in turmoil ever since. Stang was followed by Mark Casazza (five seasons), Josh Downey (did not coach a game), Curtis Green (two seasons), Sean Duff (two seasons) and, now, Smith, who was tabbed to lead his alma mater last year. And while his first goal, he said, was to bring some consistency to a team under near-constant upheaval, he also has a realistic chance to do something no coach since Stang has been able to do: take Whitefish back to the state tournament.

Lee Walburn drives past defenders during Whitefish basketball practice on Feb. 13, 2019. Greg Lindstrom | Flathead Beacon

Delgado is a coach from a different era, a hard-nosed disciplinarian who carried high expectations for his pupils. And at least one of those pupils sure sounds a lot like his old coach.

“Intensity, that’s kind of been the word all year,” Lee Walburn, a senior on 2018-19 Bulldogs, said of his first impression of Smith. “You’ve got to perform every single day, no matter what, and there’s no excuses.”

“He holds us all to really high standards and that’s been a big difference,” fellow senior Dillon Botner said. “He doesn’t take any slacking and he’s not afraid to call you out and tell you to pick it up.”

Botner, Walburn and their teammates got a first real taste of Smith’s tough-minded approach the day after a blowout loss to Hamilton on Jan. 5, a team Whitefish had upset earlier in the season.

“It is not fun,” Botner remembered after a quick laugh. “You’re going to run, of course, but a lot of it is learning.”

Dillon Botner shoots over defenders during Whitefish basketball practice on Feb. 13, 2019. Greg Lindstrom | Flathead Beacon

Thankfully for the Bulldogs, there haven’t been too many practices like the one after the Hamilton loss, because Whitefish is 13-5 and went 7-3 in the Northwest A conference during the regular season, locking up the second seed at last weekend’s district tournament. The Bulldogs were 2-18 a year ago, and while nearly everyone is back from that team, a year of experience is not nearly enough to explain the remarkable turnaround.

Part of that credit goes to Smith, for sure, but at least as much goes to players like Botner, Walburn and three other seniors, who could have easily rolled their eyes at a coach who demanded excellence from a group that had enjoyed so little on-court success.

“I think they knew something needed to change,” Smith said. “They’re a talented group of kids and they knew that they weren’t going to get it done themselves … They’ve been great this year and they’ve done what I’ve asked of them.”

It didn’t hurt, either, that the Bulldogs won their first four games to start the season, doubling their win total from a year earlier. That stretch included a stunning 71-65 win against Hamilton on Dec. 7, and while the Southwest A conference champion Broncs would get their revenge in January, that first win told everyone involved with Whitefish basketball that this year could be different.

“We always knew we had the talent,” Botner said. “We pulled (the Hamilton game) out in overtime and we were like, ‘OK, we could be the real deal.’ And that’s what really go us to start buying in.”

Botner is 6-foot-6 and has a scholarship to play football along the offensive line at the University of Montana next year, and his bulk inside is the tone-setter for Whitefish’s vastly improved defense. The Bulldogs allowed just 51.6 points per game in conference, which is usually good enough for a team that features one of the state’s most dynamic scorers.

Walburn, 6-foot-4 and an elite sprinter and hurdler, is an “insane athlete,” according to Botner, and he’s averaging 18.2 points per game. Walburn is nearly impossible to stop on his way to the basket and can be dangerous from the perimeter, too, but Smith has been just as impressed with his star’s development as a facilitator.

“Lee, earlier on in the season, he felt like he had to do a lot of the scoring,” Smith said. “He’s a great athlete and he took too much of that on himself, and then what it did is, as a team, we weren’t as good a team when Lee was scoring 28 points a game.”

In addition to his defense, Botner is a sturdy piece of the Whitefish offense, averaging a double-double (11.8 points, 10.0 rebounds), and junior Sam Menicke (6-foot-5) has added another big body to the Bulldogs’ formidable interior along with senior Ryan Kemm.

Lee Walburn drives past defenders during Whitefish basketball practice on Feb. 13, 2019. Greg Lindstrom | Flathead Beacon

The Bulldogs’ dreams of the state tournament were nearly cut short at the district tourney, but they survived to beat Ronan in overtime on Feb. 16 to lock up one of four spots at the Western A divisional, Feb. 21-23 in Hamilton. The top four teams from that eight-team tourney make it to state — somewhere Whitefish has not been since 2008-09 — and in the last three years the Southwest A conference has dominated the divisional, supplying three of the four state qualifiers. To make things even tougher, Whitefish must not only square off with the Southwest A’s top teams, they will also have to deal with Northwest A champion Browning and rival Polson, the team that upset the Bulldogs in the semifinals of the conference tourney.

Smith invokes the well-worn “one game at a time” cliché to put off any discussion of the state tournament, but after a renaissance season and with the prospect of the state tourney, held March 7-9 in Great Falls, very much within reach, it’s likely this won’t be the last time Smith and the Bulldogs make noise on the hardwood.

“(I wanted) to try and get some consistency in the program as far as a coach that’s going to hopefully be here for a while,” he said. “You never know, but I want to be here for a while and I was just fortunate enough that I got the job.”

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