Shannon Cate-Schweyen was just a University of Montana freshman, and four years away from becoming the only first-team All-America basketball player in the history of the Big Sky Conference.

She showed up at practice early in her career, and Coach Robin Selvig told her not to bother dressing out.

"He told me when he screamed my name during games I never looked at him," Cate-Schweyen says. "He told me instead of practicing, I was going to get my hearing checked. He was serious. He thought there was something wrong with my hearing. And so I went and had my hearing checked."

It was fine.

Whether it still is, is another matter. Now one of three former Lady Griz players who are his assistant coaches, Cate-Schweyen has spent the last 12 years on the bench with Selvig, who tends to discuss - rather loudly - his team's defensive lapses, shot selection and other assorted woes with anyone nearby.

To listen to him during a game, you'd think the Lady Griz had not won once in the 26 years he's coached them.

Instead, they've won 600 times.

The latest milestone came Saturday night in a victory over Portland State as UM polished off its 18th conference championship with a 14-0 mark. It is the eighth time a Lady Griz crown has come with an undefeated record, and UM will carry a 25-4 overall mark into this week's Big Sky tournament, where the Lady Griz gun for their 15th trip to the NCAAs.

The 600 wins have Selvig hovering near the top 10 in America in coaching victories - Auburn's Joe Ciampi and Georgia's Andy Landers are tied for 10th, each with 606.

He got to 600 faster than all but five coaches in the history of college basketball, men or women, and faster than all but Pat Summitt of Tennessee and Jody Conradt of Texas in the women's game. Selvig's teams have won those 600 games in just 772 attempts, a .7772 winning percentage that is fifth best in the land.

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If your only exposure to Selvig comes during Lady Griz games - probably the case for several thousand people - you might be puzzled by Montana's success under him. Some have been. Two years ago a letter to the editor from a fan accused Selvig of abusive behavior toward his players, based on what the fan witnessed at games.

Another letter quickly arrived. Don't mistake his passion for coaching with abuse, it said. "Coach Selvig is a very gentle and caring person and would never hurt anyone or anything in any way."

It was signed by every player on the team.

You have to understand, his players love him.

They just don't want to sit next to him during a game, or ride with him in a car.

"No one wants to be right next to him during a game," laughs Catie (McElmurry) Walker, who played for Selvig from 1994-98.

"You definitely didn't want that first spot on the bench," agrees Terre (Tracy) Giltrap (1987-91). "He'd slide down and give you an earful about whatever was going on on the court."

The funny thing, Walker says, is that when they'd later tell Selvig what he said during a game, he never believed it.

"He swears that it never came out of his mouth," she says. "We'd have somebody at the free-throw line, and he'd tell everyone on the bench, 'She's the worst free-throw shooter in America.' It's hilarious. And he insists he never said it."

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One of the favorite stories of Skyla Sisco (1993-98) came when teammate Ann Lake, the fifth-leading scorer in Montana history but one of its poorest (barely 50 percent) free-throw shooters, went to the line at Northern Arizona during crunch time in a close game.

"Everybody pray!" Selvig ordered his players on the bench.

Then he reconsidered. "Never mind. Not even God can help her free-throw shooting," he told them.

Even today, the player closest to Selvig on the bench leaves as many empty seats between herself and the coach as possible.

"They're being wimps," says Annette Rocheleau. "I've sat next to him for 25 years."

Of course, she admits, she can't hear that well out of her right ear anymore.

"He's such an intense guy," says Rocheleau, who played for Selvig from 1979-81 and has been his top assistant since. "My goal on the bench is to not feed the fire."

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The intense coach the public sees, Rocheleau notes, is the same coach who takes his players for ice cream, plays practical jokes on them, and re-enacts funny moments from games in "sports quiz," a popular part of Lady Griz practices.

"One of the best was, one time Meg Harrington, when she took her warmup off before player introductions, had put her arm through her head hole in the uniform - it just looked kind of not right," Rocheleau says.

The next week when the coaching staff re-enacted moments from the game in the "who-did-this" quiz, Selvig removed his warmup jacket and had his arms and head sticking out all the wrong holes of a sweatshirt.

"It looked even funnier with his farmer tan," Rocheleau says.

"Rob is awesome," she continues. "He sees the best of everybody, and he genuinely cares about the players and pushes them because he wants them to do well."

And well they do.

Ruth (Fugleberg) Hinther, who played at Montana from 1981-83, bumped into her old coach a couple of years ago.

"You have to understand, I was one of the most insignificant players in the history of the program," she says. "I broke most of my sweat in warmups. But there was this one game, I think against Portland State, and for some reason I was in there at crunch time. I came off picks at the top of the key and hit a couple of jump shots that helped us. Of course I've never forgotten it. But Rob brought it up. It's been 100 years since that game, and he remembered those shots as well as I did. That really meant something to me, that he'd remember."

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Selvig's off-court caring, humor and humility, carefully prepared practices and in-game intensity combine in a way that inspires his players, who are fiercely loyal to the coach who sometimes screams unmercifully at them from tip-off to final buzzer.

Hinther tells of a road trip where she and five or six teammates broke their curfew.

"It wasn't anything too terrible, we were still in the hotel," she says. "But we went by a room where they were having a wedding reception, went in and started dancing the night away. We were having a great time. Then coach walked in."

What followed, she says, was "the most incredibly slow elevator ride I've ever been on."

Selvig told them he was scared, because he'd had no idea where they were, if they were all right. He told them how disappointed he was.

"He told us we'd broken his heart, and it made every one of us sick to think we'd done that," Hinther says.

"He was still young when I played, I think he was still in his 20s," she goes on. "Every player had a crush on him that lasted until the first day of practice. He's always been a yeller. Personally, I think he's mellowed since back then. You got thick-skinned real fast. And you worried more if he stopped yelling at you."

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Krista Redpath (1995-98, 2000) occasionally interviews former Lady Griz players for the halftime show of Montana women's basketball radio broadcasts. One of her standard questions is: What's your favorite Rob story?

One of hers is the home game when Selvig showed up covered in cat hair.

"Rob likes to play piano before a game," Redpath says. "Well, their cat likes to sit on the piano bench, and it must shed, because Rob got to the game with hair all over the back of his suit. Shannon (Cate-Schweyen) was trying to pick all this cat hair off his suit while he was giving his pregame talk - it just looked so funny."

Sherri Brooks (1991-96) ended up in Selvig's car during a rainstorm on a road trip. Montana suffered one of its rare losses. The players climbed back into the car with Selvig. The rain, done. The windshield wipers, still on. Screech-screech-screech-screech, back and forth across the dry windshield at high speed, Selvig oblivious to the wipers, a car full of freshmen looking nervously at one another, afraid to point it out.

Sandy (Selvig) Sullivan, who played for her older brother from 1978-81, recalls the time Selvig got lost en route to a road game in Oregon.

"We drove round and round and round," Sullivan says. "The buzzer rang, it's time to play, and we're not even at the gym yet. We ran in, got dressed, got out there and got beat. That didn't sit well."

Later that night, Selvig gathered his team in the hotel and brought out a cake he'd bought them - "Triple-decker fudge, top-of-the-line, very expensive cake," Sullivan says. "It was very good, and made us feel better."

Selvig's sense of direction, and driving skills, are legendary among Lady Griz players. In this year's press guide, most of his current players, asked to describe their coach in three words, came up with "a bad driver," "very bad driver," "extremely bad driver" or "the worst driver."

"When I was a freshman we were on a trip to DePaul," says Kristy Langton-Schlimgen (1990-95). "Of course, upperclassmen wouldn't go near his car, so the freshmen always got stuck with Rob.

"Anyway, he somehow got lost and drove us into some parking lot located under the airport, and we had to pay to get out of a lot we hadn't even parked in. Then, on the interstate, he drove us the wrong way up an on-ramp. So we end up creeping backward down the side of the ramp to get back on the freeway - this is Chicago, mind you - and then he has to gun it to get us back in the flow of traffic. And when you finally do get off at the right exit, you know what's coming. You need a whiplash neck brace riding with him. He goes from zero to 60, slams on the brakes at the next stoplight, all the way through town."

When there were longer car trips - say, the two-hour haul up the mountain from Phoenix to Flagstaff to play Northern Arizona - the freshmen endured "two hours of oldies tunes on the radio," Langton-Schlimgen says. "And he knew every single song."

"I've been offered money by players to not ride with him," laughs Rocheleau. "He's been known to get in an airport parking garage or two and not be able to find his way out."

He's also notorious for losing overcoats in hotels, airports and gyms, so when his coaching staff decided to go in on a nice leather coat for him for Christmas two years ago, they went to the extra expense of having his name and address sewn into the inside in large letters, in the hopes that when Selvig forgets it somewhere - and they're pretty sure he will - whoever finds it might try to get it back to him.

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For his part, Selvig shrugs off the 600 wins as something that, some day, it will be nice to look back on.

"So many people have played such a big part in it," he says.

"Rob's always had the ultimate respect for every opponent," Hinther says. "You'll never see him brag about having the premier program like a certain other coach across the state. It's not his style. He lets the scoreboard do the talking. I think a lot of his success is due to the way he prepares teams for games. Even if we were playing the Little Sisters of the Poor, Rob had this ability to convince us we were going up against a bunch of All-Americans."

The 600 wins began with a 69-48 defeat of Montana Tech on Dec. 6, 1978. Selvig entered that game with a career record of 0-2.

In 26 years, there's been but one losing record. His teams have 22 times won 20 or more games (and two other times finished one win shy of 20). Reaching the 20-win plateau 22 times is even somewhat misleading, because half those seasons the Lady Griz actually won 25, 26, 27 or 28 games.

Which is why, every four to five years, Robin Selvig adds another 100 wins to his career total.

Six hundred wins in 26 years. Not bad for a guy who can't find his way out of a parking garage.