Even with six blowout wins in conference play, Jon Newlee would be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous coming into this game. He said as much himself.
The Idaho coach knew how good Grand Canyon was — the 13-4 Antelopes featured five transfers from other Division I schools and brought a step up in athleticism compared to Idaho’s other Western Athletic Conference foes.
He was nervous for all of 59 minutes and 57 seconds before Stacey Barr sank two free throws to put the game out of reach, securing a 58-54 win to move Idaho to 7-0 in WAC play Thursday night at the Cowan Spectrum.
“Relieved is a good word. To be able to win a game when you’re shooting as poorly as we did is nice,” Newlee said. “I told our girls, we haven’t been tested in a while. It’s been coming easy, but tonight, I thought our defense really dug in and really stuck to our game plan.”
The typical hot-shooting, easy-in-transition Vandal team wasn’t present this night. Idaho came out tight and remained so for large stretches on the game. Grand Canyon was athletic and closing out on Idaho’s shooting, playing physical in the paint and forcing bad looks.
Idaho did the same on the other end and what resulted was both teams shooting below 31 percent from the field. Missing 16 of their first 17 shots, the Vandals only put up three points in the first eight minutes of the game, trailing 11-3 with 11 minutes to go in the first half.
The defensive intensity is what kept Idaho in the game. Specifically, sophomore Ali Forde. The stat-sheet stuffer came out with 15 rebounds, three blocks, three assists and eight points and a defensive performance that Newlee said is as good as he’s ever seen from her.
“She’s physical, she’s blocking shots, she’s talking, she’s directing, she’s doing everything at the defensive end. She’s really getting it done,” Newlee said.
In lieu of a blowout, Idaho’s main rotation was asked to play more minutes than usual in the conference slate. Only seven players saw minutes, with Forde stretching it out to 36 minutes on the floor.
“It was definitely good for me, I was a little gassed, I’m not going to lie,” Forde said. “It was good for me to play so many minutes because coming down to the end of the first half season, taking me into the second half, other teams are going to know how we play.”
While Idaho won’t see Grand Canyon in Las Vegas for the WAC Tournament due to NCAA rules regarding the transition from Division-II to Division-I, the game had a feel of the WAC Tournament games Idaho played last March — all one-possession wins.
It played in to how Idaho approached this game, senior Alyssa Charlston said, and was the type of game Idaho feels it needed after so many blowout wins in the conference schedule.
“We were talking about in the locker room, our team maturity, we have the confidence in those situations,” Charlston said. “We have that mindset that we can make it through. Luckily right now it is all kind of going our way.”
Sean Kramer can be reached at [email protected]