The ability to close out games has hampered Idaho all season, but the team appears to have learned from its past mistakes.
With less than five minutes remaining, Idaho and Sacramento State were tied at 55-55. The Vandals, however, avoided a late game collapse with a 14-3 run to beat Sacramento State 69-58, Saturday night in Cowan Spectrum.
When the Vandals lost their 11-point lead midway through the second half, Idaho coach Don Verlin said he simply told his team to just keep fighting.
“We’ve been in that situation before, so lets just fight every possession — and they did,” he said. “We’re growing up, we’re getting older, we’re getting more seasoned … we’re not making the defensive errors we did and we’re able to withstand a little adversity. It’s good to see this team grow.”
After the recent 1-2 road trip, Idaho responded with a two-game sweep of Portland State and Sacramento State. The team improved to 11-12 overall and 6-6 in conference competition. The two wins also propelled Idaho from eighth to sixth place in the Big Sky standings.
Next up for Idaho is a pair of road games against two teams they have yet to play this season — Southern Utah and Northern Arizona.
A big reason for the win over Sacramento State was Idaho’s defensive effort.
Verlin said he’s proud of the way his team played defense against the Hornets, who he thinks is the best offensive team in the conference.
Senior guard Connor Hill, who finished with 11 points, echoed his coach and praised the defense as the reason for the victory.
“Our defense played well tonight,” he said. “That’s our goal. They only scored 58 points and they’re a great offensive team.”
The Hornets went 5-of-23 from behind the arc and shot just 41 percent from the field.
With Eastern Washington’s loss to Portland State earlier in the day, Sacramento State entered Saturday’s game as the conferences No. 1 team — which was short lived as they moved back to second place after the loss.
“I think we can play with anybody in the conference,” Verlin said. “I think this conference is really even (and) the team that plays the best, gets hot in the tournament, will be the team getting out and going to the NCAA tournament — why shouldn’t it be us?”
“We got enough talent,” he added. “If we play right, we’ll have a chance to win the conference tournament. We got to get there first though.”
Korbin McDonald can be reached at [email protected]