In Reunion of Ex-Huskies, Grant Joins Battle at Montana State
Jackson Grant will try to do what RaeQuan Battle did — head to Montana State and rebound from a less-than-satisfying college basketball experience at the University of Washington.
At the very least, those two can sit and swap Mike Hopkins stories.
On Wednesday, the 6-foot-10 forward from Olympia, Washington, revealed he will join the Big Sky team and recent NCAA Tournament qualifier, becoming teammates with Battle, a former Husky guard.
Grant was one of the more perplexing UW players over a number of seasons, arriving as a McDonald's All-American and the Gatorade Player of the Year only to appear overmatched at the Pac-12 level, at least offensively.
This past season, while appearing in 14 games, he shot just 2 for 15 from the floor, 0 for 5 from 3-point range and 3 for 8 from the foul line.
Over 39 games, Grant went scoreless in 28 of them. He never reached double figures. He had a career-best game of 7 points against Northern Arizona — coming in his second outing as a Husky.
While dropping down a level to the Big Sky Conference was likely a very wise move on Grant's part, it will be interesting to see if he was mismanaged by Hopkins, whose player-development coaching skills have been a source of contention.
Yet to be fair, Grant became seriously ill with COVID as a freshman, losing nearly 20 pounds and rendering him ineffective. This past season, he expected to redshirt and sat out the first eight games, only to have UW big man Franck Kepnang go down with a season-ending knee injury and have to pick up some of his minutes.
Battle similarly spent two seasons at the UW right before Grant joined the team, showed some promise as a shooter but got benched during a miserable 5-21 season and transferred to Montana State.
This past season, Battle, a 6-foot-5 guard from Tulalip, Washington, averaged 17 points per game, was named Big Sky Tournament Most Valuable Player and helped lead the Bobcats into the NCAAs and to a 25-10 season.
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