The Idaho men’s basketball team dropped a thrilling road matchup 68-65 to Sacramento State, despite the opportunity to climb the Big Sky Conference standings.
The loss snaps Idaho’s three game win streak and drops the Vandals to 17-11 overall and 9-6 in Big Sky play.
“Sacramento State became the most aggressive team,” said Idaho head coach Don Verlin. “We got up 11 and we didn’t finish this basketball game. They grabbed the momentum, they outrebounded us, they outcompeted us on both ends of the court.”
As a result of the loss, the Vandals lose possession of fourth place in the conference standings. The team slipped to fifth in the rankings with three games remaining.
Verlin said the team must finish the season strong to regain a first-round bye.
“It’s obviously a very disappointing loss,” Verlin said. “We had a chance to get ourselves all the way to third in the standings tonight, but what we need to do is keep going, keep plugging along.”
The Vandals struggled shooting from the field in the second half, converting 7 of 22 shots. Meanwhile, the Hornets made 15 of 27 field goal attempts.
Verlin said Sacramento State did a better job of defending the Vandals in the second half.
Junior guard Perrion Callandret led Idaho with 14 points, converting all nine of his free throw attempts.
In his first start since returning from a hand injury, sophomore guard Victor Sanders finished the night with 12 points.
Verlin said he was disappointed with how the team was unable to contain the Hornets on defense.
“It’s going to take some time for us to play our best basketball,” Verlin said. “Where I was disappointed tonight was our defense. We got through this stretch without them by defending the ball and we didn’t do that Saturday.”
Cody Demps and Justin Strings scored a combined 41 points for Sacramento State, with Strings leading all scorers with 23 points.
“Both players did a good job on driving the ball through the lane,” Verlin said. “You got to give coach (Brian) Katz and his team some credit. They put in a lot of energy and I thought they fought and they grinded one out on us.”
Sacramento State head coach Brian Katz said the win boosts the team’s confidence level after losing four straight games.
“We had lost a bit of our magic on the home court so this was a very important win,” Katz said. “(Saturday’s game), especially in the second half, felt like the way we played early in the season and we might be getting back to the level of play.”
Despite a low scoring first half from the Hornets, Idaho was only able to increae the lead to eight in the first half.
The Hornets shot 30.8 percent (8-of-26) compared to Idaho’s 52.2 percent (12-of-23).
Arkadiy Mkrtychyan led the Vandals with nine points in the first half.
After a trey from Sanders stretched the lead to 11, the Hornets responded with a 8-0 run.
Sacramento State continued to cut into Idaho’s lead, shrinking the deficit to three after Dreon Bartlett converted a shot deep from the perimeter.
Idaho’s offense struggled shooting the ball, converting 5-11 shots from the field compared to 12 of 18 for Sacramento State.
A layup by Jeff Wu put the Hornets back in front midway through the period. It was the game’s third and final lead change.
Wu would strike again with a 3-pointer to extend Sacramento State’s run to 16-4.
Callandret was fouled on the following possession by Wu and was able to make both shots from the charity stripe.
Freshman power forward Nate Sherwood drove by the Hornets defense on the next Vandal possession and made a layup to tie the game at 58 with 4:14 left.
Foul calls would bite the Vandals, starting with an offensive foul for Sanders, whose basket was waved off.
Sanders would respond by later tying the game at 60, but Bartlett beat the shot clock with a basket to regain the lead.
A late foul by sophomore small forward Jordan Scott sent Strings on the free throw line, extending the Hornets lead to four points.
Idaho had an opportunity to tie the game in the closing seconds, but Callandret’s desperation 3-pointer missed the mark, resulting in a 68-65 loss for the Vandals.
Sacramento State ended the game shooting 43.4 percent from the field, while Idaho shot 42.2 percent.
Sacramento State outrebounded Idaho 34-31. The Hornets collected nine offensive boards.
The Vandals will wrap up the regular season with three straight games in Moscow. Idaho will face Eastern Washington at 1 p.m. Saturday in the Memorial Gym.
Verlin said the team must finish the final three home games with wins to snag an automatic bye in the conference postseason tournament.
“We had a good road season and now we have to finish the home season in style with three great games coming up,” Verlin said. “We have three tough home games, all of them above us in the standings and we’re going to find out about ourselves in these next couple of weeks.”
Verlin said the Vandals only detriment during the road trip was a singular bad half.
“Hopefully we can keep doing what we’ve been doing and get back to defending the way we need to,” Verlin said. “Saturday was really our only bad half of this road trip, but you can’t have a bad half at this time of the season.”
Luis Torres can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @TheLTFiles
(Photo courtesy by Bob Solorio)