The game Kacie Borowicz would not miss. Zeke Mayo’s improbable comeback. Elle Evans announcing herself to the college basketball world. 
 
Meetings between Big Sky and Summit teams have already produced memorable moments on both the men’s and women’s side of the conference. With the Big Sky-Summit Challenge being announced earlier this week, Summit fans can look forward to even more opportunities for thrilling non-conference action against fellow mid-major programs.
 
Here are some of the most thrilling games in recent memory for the two leagues that butt up against each other geographically, and will get even more familiar in the coming years. 
 
December 10, 2022: South Dakota State 77, Eastern Washington 76 (MBB)
 
The Jackrabbits were dealing with some Big Sky woes early last season. 
 
They got blown out in Missoula on December 6, the final game in a brutal four-day stretch that had seen them play road games at Kent State (a future NCAA Tournament team), Alabama (the future No. 1 overall seed) and, ultimately, Montana. The year prior, an inexplicable loss at Idaho was the only real blemish on SDSU’s sparkling 27-4 regular season. Would that loss have sunk any potential at-large hopes? Fortunately for SDSU, that never became a relevant question. 
 
That’s a long way of saying that when SDSU went down by 23 points with 8:51 left at home against Eastern Washington on December 10, another Big Sky loss seemed inevitable. Until it wasn’t. 
 
Zeke Mayo would score a then-career-high 30 points – 17 of them in the second half – to fuel a massive comeback and overturn that deficit. His final basket, a banked in runner with just seconds remaining, gave the Jackrabbits the 77-76 lead that they would not relinquish. Eric Henderson talked about what he hoped that moment would mean for Mayo. 
 
“We don’t want our guys to be fearful,” he said. “We want them to have confidence and swagger and — I think Zeke in particular — I have great belief that this will be a turning point when you talk about him in that sense.”
 
The sophomore would in fact continue to grow into one of the best players in the Summit, with that EWU comeback one of the highlights of his year.
 
November 7, 2022: North Dakota State 65, Montana 63 (WBB) 
 
Arguably North Dakota State’s best season as a Division I program started with a bang in Big Sky country. The Bison were able to escape Missoula on opening night of the 2022-23 season with a two-point win, powered in large part by Heaven Hamling’s 19 points. In her college debut, Bison forward Elle Evans scored four points in the final minute of the fourth quarter to push NDSU past the Grizzlies.
 
“That was a back and forth game and we had to handle some situations at the end, and you never know how that’s going to go with new players, young players, inexperienced players, but we made some good plays,” Jory Collins said. “It gave us a little momentum boost when we came home after that.”
 
The dramatic opening night win not only launched what would ultimately be a Freshman of the Year campaign for Evans, it was also the first of a program-high 18 wins for the Bison since joining Division I in 2018. And it was an especially important win to tip off the 2022-23 season as Collins integrated eight newcomers – including Evans – into a team led by stalwart Hamling. The win also moved NDSU even with the Grizzlies in their all-time series at 2-2.
 
November 20, 2021: North Dakota 89, Montana State 85 (WBB)
 
Call it the Automatic Borowicz Game. 
 
The Fighting Hawks’ narrow win over the Bobcats, in wich Kacie Borowicz went 20-for-20 from the free throw line, officially kicked off a resurgent era in Grand Forks. It was Mallory Bernhard’s first win since having the interim head coach title removed, and gave UND its first win of the 2021-22 season. And was it ever important. 
 
The Fighting Hawks were coming off a 2-19 campaign in 2020-21, and had started the year at 0-3, having just dropped a home game to Montana. Things changed against the Bobcats, as Borowicz exploded for 33 points in her season debut after being limited to just seven games the year before because of a stress fracture to her tibia. She sank free throw after free throw that night against MSU, in what ultimately was a single-game, program-record amount of makes. That she was making history, however, was lost on the then-junior in the moment. 
 
“I knew I had shot a lot of free throws, but they were pretty spread out until the last minute,” Borowicz said. “When Coach [Bernhard] said I just went 20-for-20 I said, ‘I just shot 20 free throws? There’s no way I shot 20 free throws.’”
 
However those points came, they laid the groundwork for a resurgent 15-15 campaign for the Fighting Hawks, which was followed by an even better 19-13 record this past season. 
 
December 11, 2021: South Dakota 76, Northern Arizona 71 (OT) (MBB)
 
The Big Sky brought some drama to Vermillion early in the 2021-22 season. 
 
Northern Arizona star guard Jalen Cone got his numbers that night – a then-career high 33 points – but it was the Coyotes that came out on top in an overtime win. The victory would ultimately be a part of a perfect non-conference home record for USD that year against Division I opposition (4-0). Xavier Fuller, who would by happenstance transfer to NAU the following year, had one of his finest games as a Coyote that night (20 points) before injuries impacted the rest of his campaign. Mason Archambault (18 points, 10 rebounds) also notched his first career double double.
 
The most thrilling shot of the game might have belonged to Cone, who drilled a game-tying three at the buzzer to send the game to overtime, but it was USD that would salt the game away in overtime. Todd Lee said after the game that he felt guarding Cone would prepare the Coyotes for Max Abmas, and he was proven to not be entirely off base.
 
The Oral Roberts star would go for 32 points against them just over a week later, but the Coyotes held Abmas to his second-lowest scoring game of the Summit season (14 points, 1-7 3FG) in a USD win in Vermillion later that year. Did chasing around Cone contribute? Whether it did or not, the win over the Lumberjacks was a thrilling moment in the Coyoes 2021-22 campaign. 
 
December 29, 2019: Omaha 87, Montana 82 (OT) (MBB)
 
The Mavericks finished the non-conference portion of their 2019-20 season with a flourish against the visiting Grizzlies. 
 
Trailing by six points with 48 seconds, KJ Robinson refused to let Omaha lose. The senior scored seven points the rest of the way to set the stage for a game-tying three by fellow senior JT Gibson with 2.1 seconds left to send the game to overtime. They’d eventually push past Montana in overtime, and roll that momentum into a Summit-opening win against eventual co-champion South Dakota State eight days later. 
 
This was not one of Derrin Hansen’s best teams in Omaha, but it had all the hallmarks his long tenure leading the Mavericks. Exciting guards in Robinson and Gibson, a versatile big man in Matt Pile and, at the end of the day, a competitive team (the Mavericks would go 9-7 in the league that year). The win against the Grizzlies – who would turn in a 14-6 campaign in the Big Sky – was one of the highlights.