BILLINGS — It was a late October Friday night, just a couple hours after Billings West’s thrilling girls soccer championship victory over Bozeman Gallatin, and Kelly Darragh was hunkered down for the evening.
Darragh, the West boys basketball coach, and his wife, Rachelle, were watching a movie when at about 10:30 p.m. Kelly’s cell phone pinged. Darragh didn’t have to look at the text to know it would be seniors Gabe Hatler and Sam Phillips, checking for themselves and their Golden Bears hoops teammates if they could get into the gym for a shoot-around.
“I’d get a call or a text every day,” Darragh said earlier this week, ahead of his top-ranked Bears’ (2-0) weekend trip to Helena. “This is a different group. They just like each other. In any team, anybody that’s been around team sports that doesn’t understand the importance of liking each other, caring about each other and playing for each other … I mean, that’s 60 or 70% of it right there.”
On a team that finished 7-8 a year ago that features only three players returning with any varsity experience — Hatler, Phillips and sophomore Cooper Tyson — the senior duo represents a renewed energy around the Bears. The 2020-21 season wasn’t a catastrophe but it was just the program’s second losing season in the seven (now eight) years that Darragh has been in charge.
And with the graduation of five seniors and several of last year’s juniors no longer with the program, few outsiders would look at those odds and say they favor the Bears. But those are outsiders.
“A good team is a team that works together, and I think that’s what we have this year,” said Hatler, the son of former Montana State standout Scott Hatler.
Darragh considers Hatler and Phillips the tone-setters in the good vibes department. Both are straight serious about their basketball, but in a thoughtful way.
Ever curious, Phillips researches things like the best diet for athletes and makes sure he gets as much sleep as possible each night so he can be at his optimum the next day. At 6-0, he’s a cerebral-type of player. Both Hatler and Darragh marvel at Phillips’ basketball IQ and his leadership skills, another characteristic that Phillips took great pain to build by watching documentaries on college basketball players who took their teams to new levels.
“Whatever we need to do to win, he’ll motivate us to do that,” Hatler said. “He just knows how to lead a team.”
For Hatler, confidence is big part of his success, so he works on keeping that attribute as high as possible. Just two years ago as a sophomore, Hatler said he was “super skinny and short,” about 5-foot-5 and 100 pounds. (Hatler’s estimate of 100 pounds received a big eye roll from Darragh, by the way. "The 5-5 might be right," Darragh said, "but the 100 pounds might be pushing it.") Hatler is 6-3 now, and has grown, with a lot of time in the weight room, into an explosive athlete.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a high school kid dunk a basketball like Gabe Hatler does,” said Darragh, who, despite being an old-school coach who prefers his players take layups, can still marvel at Hatler’s skill.
Neither player was a vital cog on last year’s team as Phillips averaged 6.6 points per game, while Hatler clocked in at 3.2, and both admitted they thought they’d get more playing time last season. Darragh acknowledged he could have — and perhaps should have — given Hatler and Phillips more minutes last season. Even so, the coach has complete confidence in the pair this season.
And, Darragh added, he’s fortunate his players were patient and waited their turn in the program.
“They never complained” about their playing time last season, Darragh said. “I’m sure they weren’t happy, but their attitude never changed. Their work ethic never changed. They didn’t pull up their tent and go to another school. Instead, it was ‘let’s buckle down and work harder.’”
Last summer’s workouts and games were important to this group of Bears. Already friends, Hatler and Phillips bonded closer to become constant companions — “married,” is what Darragh jokingly called them — over a desire to not have a repeat of last season.
Whether Hatler and Phillips, who were elected captains, and players like Tyson and Billy Carlson and Carter Warnick get the Bears back to their winning ways remains to be seen.
It won’t be for a lack of effort, though.
“We’re all gym rats, we all love basketball,” Phillips said. “We all want to get better at this sport and we all want to improve every weekend. You couldn’t ask for anything more than that.”
Darragh might ask for one more thing, however. Fewer late-night texts.