Idaho’s four-game losing streak derived from one thing — being within one-possession coming down the stretch.
So the formula for victory was simple enough as the Vandals snapped the losing streak with a 77-64 victory over the Mavericks in Arlington.
Senior guard Mansa Habeeb goes up for a basket against New Mexico State Jan. 12 at Cowan Spectrum.
Idaho took a double-digit lead late in the second half and continued to buffer the lead, never letting UTA within less than six points.
Holding a 12 point lead with 7:51 remaining in the game, the Mavericks went on a 6-0 run over the next minute to cut the lead in half, but Idaho withstood the run with a 5-0 run of its own and never looked back.
“I thought we had a great team effort tonight,” Idaho coach Don Verlin said. “We had a number of guys come in and give us some quality, quality minutes tonight. Everybody that came off the bench was enthusiastic and energetic.”
It was a dominant second half for Idaho, which shot 13 of 18 from the field (43 points) while holding UTA to 34 points on 36 shot attempts in the second half.
The win pulls Idaho to 7-9 and 3-4 in conference play on the season, having played and lost to each of the top four teams in the conference. The Vandals will now have four consecutive home games beginning with Texas State and Texas-San Antonio, which are currently dwelling in the cellar of the conference standings. The Vandals will welcome Utah State and San Jose State the following week.
Familiar struggles such as turnover margin and getting significantly less possessions than the opponent still popped up Saturday, but Idaho’s 59-percent shooting from the field pulled the Vandals through.
The disparity in shot attempts gave Kyle Barone a career night in rebounding. He ended the night with 18 boards.
“I thought he rebounded with a purpose and I thought he rebounded with aggression. That was one of our keys going in. We knew we had to rebound the ball at a high level,” Verlin said.
A fast start contributed every bit as much to Idaho’s victory, never trailing at any point in the game thanks to starting the game on an 18-8 run, capped off with back-to-back Connor Hill 3-point shots. Hill had one of his best games of the season with 19 points on 7-9 shooting, while going 4 of 6 from 3-point land.
“They (UTA) doubled the ball, but we did a nice job of the moving the ball, finding the open guy and making the open shots when we needed to. We just made a bunch of shots tonight,” Verlin said.
Barone’s biggest impact on the game may have been setting the tempo in the half-court offense for Idaho, getting to the free-throw line seven times, hitting six of his attempts. He ended the game with 14 points in addition to his 18 boards.
“I wanted to come out and kind of set the tone,” Barone said. “I knew they were going to come at us hard on the boards, like coach talked about before the game. I came out hard from the beginning and the ball just kind of found me and I found the ball.”
The unsung hero for Idaho was sixth man Mansa Habeeb. Having struggled in the early going of conference play, Habeeb was aggressive in attacking the basket and hit all six of his free-throw attempts.
Sean Kramer can be reached at [email protected]