Hill shines in Idaho’s disappointing season
The 2014-2015 men’s basketball season will be remembered as the year Connor Hill reigned supreme while he continued his prowess of raining 3s — a lot of them.
The senior shooting guard from Post Falls, Idaho, spent his final season rewriting the Idaho record books.
Hill’s 108 buckets from behind the arc not only gave him Idaho’s single-season record for 3s made in a season, but padded his lead as the program’s all-time leader in 3-pointers made with 340, which puts him 172 ahead of second place Orlando Lightfoot (1991-1994) who made 168 during his career.
“It means a lot,” Hill said during the season of his 3-point record. “I don’t think about it that much on a daily basis, but when I do think about it, it holds a special place in my heart. It’s coach Verlin and this university that gave me a shot and I did something special with it. I’m just thankful for that.”
Hill and the Vandals’ season ended after an early first-round exit in the Big Sky Tournament after a 91-83 loss to Eastern Washington.
The Eagles were led by their own sharp shooter, Tyler Harvey, who led the nation in 3s made with 128 and in scoring with an average of 23.1 points per game.
Hill, who was battling the flu in the final game, led Idaho with 23 points, while Harvey set a Big Sky Tournament record, scoring 42 points.
“Two great shooters going at it, but Tyler Harvey just made some unbelievable shots,” Idaho coach Don Verlin said after the game. “It never ends quite how you wanted it to, but it’s been a blessing to coach these guys … I think we got a little bit better feel (of the conference). We’re excited about Vandal basketball moving forward.”
With an overall record of 13-17 and 8-11 in conference competition, the Vandals’ first season back in the Big Sky might not have gone exactly as planned.
“It wasn’t how we drew it up,” Verlin said. “We thought we could win a few more games.”
Idaho’s struggles came on the road as 13 of the team’s 17 losses came from away games. The Vandals only managed to win two games away from Moscow, one of which was in Pullman against Washington State.
Despite losing the final two games of the season, the Vandals’ 8-10 conference record allowed them to barely make the conference tournament as the No. 7 seed.
The low seed resulted in the matchup against EWU, a team Idaho failed to beat in each of the three meetings between the two. A combined six points decided the two regular season games.
Verlin said the Big Sky was a tougher conference than the WAC was last year and the team needs to make some adjustments to compete within the conference moving forward.
“I really like where our program is at,” Verlin said. “We got to add a couple things to it, we got to get some guys better and we got to get some guys stronger.”
Nick Blair, a 6-foot-5, 185-pound forward from Las Vegas’ Bishop Gorman High School, headlines an impressive recruiting class for Verlin.
The Blair signing came shortly after sophomore guard Sekou Wiggs opted to transfer to another school — which is still unknown.
Rounding out the recruiting class with Blair is point guard Myles Franklin (Hart High School, Newhall, California), combo guard Patrick Ingram (Trinity Valley Community College, Athens, Texas) and shooting guard Tyler Brimhall (Logan High School, Logan, Utah). The Vandals also recently added San Diego graduate transfer Chris Sarbaugh.
“When we get them all here in the summer, we’ll start kind of piecing all of their places together,” Verlin said of the recruits. “It was important we got good players and great kids, and we did that … All of them are good students, all of them are fine young men and really wanted to come to the University of Idaho, so we’re happy to get them.”
Korbin McDonald can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @KorbinMcD_VN