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The 2007-08 season marks Robin Selvig’s 30th year as head coach of the Lady Griz and his 35th year of affiliation with University of Montana athletics. Selvig was a four-year member of the Grizzly basketball team (1970-71 to 1973-74), coached the men’s freshman team in 1974-75 and was named UM’s women’s basketball coach June 6, 1978.
Entering his 30th year on the Lady Griz sideline, Selvig’s monumental career numbers and coaching accolades not only continue to grow, but show no signs of leveling off. In 2006-07, Selvig guided a young, inexperienced Lady Griz team to a 27-4 record and the program’s 20th regular-season conference championship and 21st national tournament appearance.
In his first 29 seasons, Selvig has posted 27 winning seasons, 25 20-win seasons and 672 victories. He has coached the Lady Griz to 21 national tournament appearances (16 NCAA Tournaments) and 20 regular-season conference championships, for which he has been recognized as the conference coach of the year 17 times. He has coached one Kodak all-American, 11 conference MVPs, 75 all-conference selections and 99 academic all-conference players.
Selvig’s .778 career winning percentage and 672 victories both rank him among the top seven winningest active Division I women’s basketball coaches.
Upon his hiring in 1978, Selvig inherited a team that had gone 11-27 in the two seasons prior to his arrival. Success came quickly for the Lady Griz program under Selvig’s guidance and has continued with few interruptions for 29 years.
That success has placed his name among the woman’s game’s most recognized figures in coaching today, and he recently joined the rarified air of Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp, UCLA’s John Wooden, Kansas’s Phog Allen and North Carolina’s Dean Smith.
When Montana defeated Portland State on March 6, 2004, Selvig reached 600 career wins, doing so in just 772 games. That made the Lady Griz coach the sixth-fastest coach in NCAA history to reach No. 600, in all NCAA divisions, men’s or women’s, trailing the likes of Rupp (704), Tennessee’s Pat Summitt (734) and Wooden (755), but reaching the milestone faster than Smith (773) and Allen (780).
Selvig’s quarter-plus century of success has been impressive in its consistency and has been done with similar methods year after year: superior team defense, turning great crowd support into a dominating home-court advantage and remarkable league performance.
Seven different Montana teams have led the nation in a defensive category. The trend started early in Selvig’s career, when his fourth team, 1981-82, led the country in points allowed (53.3/g). Four more times the Lady Griz led the nation in scoring defense. Twice they have ranked first in field goal percentage defense.
Selvig’s 2006-07 team led the Big Sky Conference in field goal percentage defense at 35.6 percent and ranked 14th nationally. Montana was second in the league in scoring defense, allowing just 62.5 points per game while scoring an average of 77.5. UM’s +15.0 scoring margin ranked 11th nationally.
Prior to Selvig’s first year, Montana women’s basketball games were attended by an average of fewer than 200 fans per game. The support the Lady Griz enjoy today (Montana’s average home attendance of 3,965 ranked 31st in the nation last year) did not happen overnight, but rather was a gradual process.
By 1982-83 UM had cracked the 1,000 mark for average attendance (1,180). Just five years later, 1987-88, the average had jumped to 3,119 fans per game, which ranked sixth in the nation that year, and the fans have continued flooding into Dahlberg Arena.
Montana averaged a program-high 5,235 fans per game in 1994-95.
The Lady Griz have won 90 percent of their home games under Selvig, going 397-44 (.900).
Montana’s success in league play (first the Northwest Women’s Basketball League, then the Mountain West Conference and now the Big Sky Conference) under Selvig, on the other hand, was far from gradual. He took a team that went 4-19 in league play in ’77 and ’78 and turned it into a second-place finisher in the NWBL with his first team in 1978-79.
Selvig’s first 20 teams would finish either first or second in their respective conferences. To date Selvig’s teams have gone 356-62 in league play, an .852 winning percentage. Perhaps more impressive than the Lady Griz’ 192-18 (.914) record at home in those games is their 164-44 road record, a .788 winning percentage.
While Selvig is entering his 30th season as coach of the Lady Griz, his association with the university goes back to the fall of 1970, when the Outlook, Mont., native matriculated at UM as a student-athlete himself.
Selvig was a four-year member of the Grizzly basketball team, earning second team All-Big Sky honors as a senior. In his final year of competition he was also presented the John Eaheart Award as the team’s top defensive player and the Grizzly Cup, given to UM’s best all-around athlete, scholar and person.
Selvig graduated in the spring of 1974 with a degree in health and physical education. He was inducted into the Grizzly Basketball Hall of Fame in February 1983.
After coaching the Montana men’s freshman team to a 10-8 record in 1974-75, Selvig took over the girls’ basketball program at Plentywood (Mont.) High School, where he totaled a 38-24 record over three seasons.
Selvig was hired by UM athletic director Harley Lewis as Montana’s fourth women’s basketball coach on June 6, 1978, taking over a team that had gone 7-13 the previous season.
Selvig’s first Montana team finished 13-13 and in second place in the NWBL Mountain Division and, in a sign of things to come, led the league in scoring defense.
Montana’s modest improvement to .500 in Selvig’s first year blossomed into a stretch of success that rivals any team’s in the country.
After going 19-10 in 1979-80, Montana went 22-8 in 1980-81, winning the program’s first league title. Those years started a string of 19 consecutive winning seasons and 18 straight 20-win seasons.
Montana made its first of 21 national tournament appearances in 1981-82, losing a tight 57-52 decision to Wayland Baptist in the opening round of the AIAW national tournament in Berkeley, Calif.
After coaching Montana in the NWBL for four seasons, Selvig and the Lady Griz moved to the Mountain West Conference in 1982-83. Montana dominated that league for six seasons, going 78-6 in conference play, winning five regular-season league titles and four postseason conference championships and earning four NCAA Tournament trips.
In 1982-83 Montana made its first trip to the NCAA Tournament, losing at Louisiana-Monroe, 72-53.
In 1983-84 the No. 4 seed Lady Griz had a breakthrough victory when they won their first-ever NCAA Tournament game, a 56-47 home-court victory over No. 5 Oregon State.
Starting with his 1987-88 team, Selvig would take Montana to the NCAA Tournament 10 of the next 11 seasons.
When the Lady Griz began Big Sky Conference play in 1988-89, the success they had in the NWBL and MWC did not stop. Montana won the first three Big Sky Conference titles with perfect 16-0 marks and has gone 245-41 (.857) in league play overall, winning 12 more conference titles.
In February 2001 Selvig was inducted into the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame.
Selvig has been recognized often for his coaching. He won his first conference coach of the year award after the 1981-82 season when the NWBL gave Selvig his first honor. Sixteen more league accolades followed, with five Mountain West Athletic Conference and 11 Big Sky Conference coach of the year awards.
Selvig has also been named the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) District VII Coach of the Year nine times.
Following the 1990-91 season, Selvig was one of three finalists for national coach of the year honors.
An influential member of the Missoula community, Selvig has served as the director of the Montana Special Olympics and as a spokesman for Missoula Youth Homes.
A native of Outlook, Mont., Selvig came from a family of eight children. His brother, Doug, and sister, Sandy, were both University of Montana basketball letterwinners. His nephew, Derek, is a freshman on the Grizzly men’s basketball team.
Selvig and his wife, Janie, have two adult sons. Jeff and his wife Mariana are based out of Missoula. Dan currently resides in Boston.
The Selvig File
Personal
Full name: Robin Roald Selvig
Hometown: Outlook, Mont.
Birthdate: Aug. 21, 1952
Birthplace: Plentywood, Mont.
Family: Wife Janie, sons Jeff and Dan
Education
High school: Outlook High, 1970
College: Montana, 1974
Major: Health and physical education
Experience
Player: Montana, 1970-71 to 1973-74
Coach: Montana, head coach, 1978-79 to present
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