Connor Hill struggled to shoot the ball throughout the first half of Saturday’s game against Northern Kentucky. He was 0-for-3 from
behind the arc and only had three points when his team went into the locker room down 39-28 at halftime.
The second half was a different story. The senior shooting guard caught fire on Idaho’s first possession after he made his first 3-point basket of the night. Hill went on to make three more 3s and led all Vandals with 22 points.
The deficit, however, was too much for the Vandals to overcome, as they lost 79-74 to Northern Kentucky from the Atlantic Sun Conference.
Hill said the Vandals can’t fall behind by such a big margin early in the game. If the opposing team is hot in the first half, they need to be able to weather the storm, he said.
“Both games, on Tuesday night (vs. Boise State) and tonight, we did that — we rode the storm,” Hill said. “We were just down too much in the first part of the game to come back, and we can’t allow ourselves to do that.”
With the loss, Idaho falls to 2-3, while NKU improves to 3-3. The Vandals now shift their focus to the Dec. 3 matchup against rival Washington State.
Idaho coach Don Verlin said his team didn’t guard the ball well enough against Northern Kentucky.
“Give them credit, they got us in some isolations and drove our guys, and we weren’t tough enough to make the stops,” he said of the Vandals defensive performance. “We didn’t guard the ball well enough tonight. They drove around us and got to the basket time and time again … They shot way too many layups, and the bottom line is we’ve got to keep them out of the lane.”
Down 11 points at halftime, Idaho slowly worked its way back into the game. Led by Hill’s hot shooting, the Vandals went on an 8-0 run early in the second half and managed to cut the deficit to six points.
With three minutes left, Hill made a 3-pointer that cut Northern Kentucky’s lead to one-point. After NKU missed one of two free throws, senior point guard Mike Scott tied the game at 68-68 with a floater over two defenders — but that’s as close to the lead Idaho would get.
For the rest of the game, Northern Kentucky locked down Idaho’s offense and converted at the free throw line.
“We just started playing a little harder,” said Verlin of Idaho’s second half performance. “We just did a better job staying in between our man and the basket. Simply put, we didn’t do a very good job in the first half at that, and once we started to do that, we were able to get out on our fast break a little bit and get some easy shots … Bottom line is we’ve got to find a way to win, and we didn’t do that tonight.”
Game Notes:
- After scoring a career-high 31 points in Idaho’s last game against Boise State, Mike Scott scored only four points against Northern Kentucky. He did, however, have an 8-to-1 assists-to-turnover ratio.
- Senior forward Bira Seck finished with a double-double — 12 points and 14 rebounds.
- Sophomore guard Perrion Callandret continued to shoot the ball well. He finished the night with 15 points and was 5-for-8 from the floor and 3-for-4 from behind the arc.
- Sophomore guard Sekou Wiggs finished with 14 points and seven rebounds.
- The Vandals pulled down 35 rebounds (23 defensive and 12 offensive) to Northern Kentucky’s 28 (27 defensive and 1 offensive).
- Idaho turned the ball over 14 times — NKU had 13.