It surely wasn’t pretty. At times it was even excruciating. In the end though the Vandals were all smiles.
Three Idaho underclassmen laughed and joked in post-game interviews, shortly after defeating a team with only one Western Athletic Conference win by a measly eight points Saturday afternoon at the Cowan Spectrum.
That was beside the point to them. The 69-61 win over Utah Valley propelled the Vandals to 11-1 in conference play, burying part of the disappointment of the 19-point loss two days prior to Bakersfield.
Connie Ballestero leads the point in the first half of Idaho’s win over Utah Valley
Being undefeated no longer on their minds, the Vandals are back to the mindset that got the NCAA Tournament participant team from 2013 to where they are in the first place.
“I think it’s good to get this win out of the way,” sophomore Connie Ballestero said. “We had a talk after the Bakersfield game about trusting each other more, I think we came together as a team and it showed that tonight.”
Fellow sophomore Christina Salvatore patted her on the knee after that answer, more chuckling coming from the trio of players, which included freshman Brooke Reilly.
One thing was clear: The Vandals were having fun again and the intense nature of Idaho’s late come-from-behind win had a hand in that.
“We talked about being looser tonight, I think we could be looser. I think it was halfway, you unscrew the pressure valve and we unscrewed it halfway,” Newlee said.
Finding good performances at home has been a struggle for Idaho. Only one home conference game has resulted in an Idaho win of more than 15 points. Games against UT-Pan American, Grand Canyon and now Utah Valley were all nerve-racking wins. Newlee thinks the scattered nature of the home dates has played a part in that.
Instead, this has become a group that comes together much better on the road than at home. Idaho has yet to drop a conference game on the road, only one of those wins coming by less than a double-digit margin.
“I don’t think we’ve had two games in a row here (at home) in forever, it’s been so scattered to play here, it’s almost weird,” Newlee said. “We got really comfortable on the road with the whole routine travelling. This is the best road team that I think I’ve ever coached.”
Utah Valley was one of the teams that felt the wrath of Idaho’s road cohesiveness, getting blown out by 41 points the last time these two teams met.
That wasn’t the case on Thursday night when the Wolverines took a page from Bakersfield’s strategy of how to play Idaho, trying to out-physical the Vandals on the inside. It forced Idaho into a tough rebounding night and into bad looks offensively at times. The result was Utah Valley always staying within striking distance, down only nine at halftime and eventually in the lead at times late in the second half.
It was a taste of what’s to come next month in Las Vegas, Newlee said. The Vandals should well know the dangers of seeing a team for the third time after last season’s conference tournament. Last season in Las Vegas the Vandals struggled with a San Jose State team that it swept handily in the regular season, then won its next two games against teams it went 0-4 against in the regular season.
It’s that kind of thing Newlee fears could happen if his team gets complacent.
“There’s a lot more parity in this league than people think,” Newlee said. “It was kind of misleading when we blew teams out, people saying we’re so good and that those teams aren’t good. The truth lies in between.”
“That’s a preview of Las Vegas right there. Everybody is bringing it every night and that’s what’s got to happen to win.”
With the pressure of getting a bounce-back win out of the way the focus now turns toward winning the regular season championship and garnering the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament. In order to do that Idaho has to find a way to string together consistent performances at home. Its final three will be in Moscow, following a trip to Grand Canyon on Feb. 22.
“When we come home we kind of relax sometimes, we are comfortable at home, so I think sometimes we just relax when we come into games,” Salvatore said. “I think we kind of learned against Bakersfield. I think from here on out we’re going to come in ready to go, we should be playing better at home than on the road, I think we’ll fix it up.”