Montana high school hoops team's 120-game win streak ends

CHOTEAU, Mont. -- A Montana girls' basketball team lost on Thursday night for the first time since the 2010 state championship game, snapping the nation's longest winning streak at 120 games.

Class B rival Choteau defeated Fairfield 50-38 after rallying from a seven-point second-half deficit to end the longest streak in Montana high school history.

"I told them to try to act like they had been there before," said Choteau coach John Shepherd. "That's hard when you haven't been there before."

Choteau had lost 13 games to Fairfield during the streak and hadn't beaten the Eagles since the 2005-06 season.

"It was about time that we stopped that," Choteau senior Hannah Bowers said.

It was Choteau's man-to-man defense that stymied the Eagles.

"I can count the number of teams that have given us problems in man-to-man on one hand in the last three, four years," said Fairfield coach Dustin Gordon. "Our size advantage in the paint has always negated that to the point where teams have had to play us zone in order to stop us in the paint, and tonight we just couldn't get the touches that we want to get."

Gordon said Choteau just played a better game.

"I'd rather lose it to a good team than a poor team when we played poor," he said. "It's OK to lose to a good team - even if it's your crosstown rival - if they played well that night."

The Fairfield players cried as they left the court and spent a little bit longer in the locker room, but came out with smiles on their faces.

"Mainly we just kind of joked around with each other to make us feel better," said point guard Allie Steinbach. "We just came out as a team."

Fairfield's 120-game streak was the sixth-longest girls' basketball winning streak in the history of the National Federation of State High School Associations - the longest since Duncanville, Texas won 134 games from 1987-91.

According to CBS affiliate KPAX, the last team to beat Fairfield was Malta in the 2010 state championship game.

Only two prep boys' basketball streaks were longer: Passaic, New Jersey (159) and Valdosta Georgia Christian (129).

Baskin, Louisiana, holds the top spot overall with 218 consecutive games from 1947-53.

Fairfield (16-1) has won four straight state championships since its last loss- and six of the last seven titles.

Jill Barta, a freshman on Gonzaga's women's basketball team, was one of four seniors on the 2014 Fairfield team which never lost a game, winning 104. Barta was the 2013-2014 Gatorade Montana Girls Basketball Player of the Year.