Within the course of a week, the Idaho men’s basketball team has gone from having an opportunity to make history to simply fighting for its life in conference play.
Idaho lost 71-70 to New Mexico State Saturday at the Cowan Spectrum to fall to 6-9 on the season and 2-3 in conference play — the third consecutive loss for Idaho in conference play.
Coming back from 15 points down at halftime, Idaho tied the game at 68 on a 3-point shot from Stephen Madison with 48 seconds remaining in the game. With four seconds remaining, Kyle Barone hit a pair of free throws to knot it back up at 70, only to see Idaho forward Marcus Bell go for the steal and foul New Mexico State’s Daniel Mullings on the inbound pass, sending him to the line where he hit the game-winning free throw.
“Bottom line is I didn’t have them prepared. He (Bell) didn’t know what to do.” Idaho coach Don Verlin said of the play. “There must have been indecision and we didn’t execute like we should have.”
Verlin lamented Idaho’s slow start, which saw the Vandals in a 42-27 deficit at halftime, allowing New Mexico State to shoot 50 percent from the field. Idaho started attacking the paint in the second half and coming up with the stops it didn’t get in the first half, but the rally fell short.
“I thought for whatever reason we didn’t have the fire or the energy and intensity that we needed to play this game in the first half. As I told them there’s one guy on our team that (seemed to be) excited about the game and that was me,” Verlin said. “In the second half we were able to get ourselves back in and get ourselves an opportunity to win.”
Barone bounced back from his single-digit points game Thursday to finish with a double-double of 18 points and 10 rebounds, including nailing two free throws with four seconds remaining which tied it, if only for a second.
Size was a factor Saturday night, considering New Mexico State rolled out its 7-foot-5, 355-pound center, Sim Bhullar. He played 25 minutes finishing with 16 points and six rebounds, constantly disrupted Idaho’s offensive play in the paint and helped get the Aggies into the bonus in the second half.
“It’s probably the biggest person I’ll ever go against. You can’t move him, he’s pretty skilled for how big he is,” Barone said.
New Mexico State was the better first half team in hustle plays, getting 13 points off turnovers and five points off of offensive rebounds, as opposed to Idaho’s zero points in those categories. Idaho’s second-half charge was helped by only turning the ball over three times and keeping the Aggies to only one offensive rebound on the half.
“That was huge, to come back from 17 down to the team picked first to win the league,” Idaho shooting guard Connor Hill said. “(But) we can’t dig ourselves a hole so early, we seem to do that. I felt like if we played in the second half the entire game we would’ve won the game.”
Not being able to find ways to win late in the second half has become a disturbing trend for Idaho, which has seen late leads fade away against Montana, Boise State, Utah State and Denver to go along with late comeback bids, which have fallen short against UTEP, Wright State and New Mexico State.
Now the Vandals will have to pull a sweep on the road at La. Tech and Texas-Arlington in order to get back over .500 in conference play. La. Tech is currently 4-0 in the conference, while Texas-Arlington won the Southland Conference last season.
“(We’re going the) only place you can go, come back and fight like crazy,” Verlin said. “We’re 6-9 and 2-3 in conference, but this team is a lot better than 6-9. What you got to do is keep fighting, it’s all you can do, it’s what they pay me to do and it’s what these guys will do I guarantee it.”
Sean Kramer can be reached at [email protected]