One year after watching Seattle U cut down the net as WAC regular season champions, it was Idaho’s turn to do the honors. The Vandals beat the Redhawks 60-57 Saturday in Memorial Gym to clinch the 2014 WAC regular season title and the No. 1 seed heading into the WAC Tournament.
Andrew Deskins | Argonaut
The Vandals celebrate after beating Seattle U 60-57 to clinch the WAC regular season championship title. They will head to the WAC Tournament in Las Vegas as the No. 1 seed next week with hopes of repeating last year’s win.
“It feels great. It was our goal coming into this year to be regular season champs and then repeat in Vegas,” Idaho coach Jon Newlee said. “It’s the first step of our goal and it’s a great accomplishment without a doubt. We remember them cutting the nets down (last year) and the big cake they had out there and their big celebration, so probably a little extra special to get it against them this year.”
The win marked Idaho’s first regular season conference championship since the 1984-85 season and the first 20-win season since 2003-04. But the win almost didn’t come for the Vandals and their 1,054 fans in attendance.
Idaho trailed by one point with 34 seconds left in the game. That’s when junior Stacey Barr drove the lane, skirted a defender with a spin and completed a layup, which gave Idaho a 58-57 lead. The Vandals made a couple free throws after Barr’s layup, but Seattle couldn’t get back on the scoreboard.
Barr’s layup gave Idaho one of only three leads it had all game. The Vandals struggled in the first half, shooting 28.6 percent from the field compared to Seattle’s 39.4 percent. The Redhawks went into halftime with a 31-27 lead over the Vandals and led by as many as eight points.
Idaho turned around the game in the second half.
“I think we got a lot of good looks in the first half, they just didn’t go in,” sophomore guard Christina Salvatore said. “We’re never not confident in ourselves to make shots, so we just continued to make good passes and they started falling in the second half — which was huge.”
The Vandals stuck with the Redhawks in the second half in a game that saw 10 ties. Idaho found its first lead since the opening minutes on a 3-pointer by senior post Alyssa Charlston with 14:53 left in play.
“I think they lost energy before us,” Charlston said. “We kept our energy up the entire game. It’s our leaders talking on defense and making sure we’re getting those stops and those rebounds. Everyone just came out and we scored when we needed to and people made some big plays — it was huge.”
One Vandal who kept her energy high was Barr. The guard from Melbourne, Australia, led Idaho with 14 points and had the go-ahead basket, but with as little as 7:30 remaining in the game, she had only made one shot from the field.
“I think she always brings a high level of intensity every game,” Salvatore said of Barr. “We have so much confidence in her and we’re always trusting that she’s going to knock it down and make the big play.”
Salvatore finished with 13 points, one behind Barr, but the Vandals also found success inside. Charlston and sophomore post Ali Forde combined for 22 points.
The Idaho posts had to play more minutes than normal against Seattle, as freshman post Brooke Reilly sat out with an injury.
“It was tiring, but we knew we weren’t going to have Brooke going into it,” Charlston said. “Maren (Austgulen) stepped up big, played some extra minutes for us. She played really good defense … on (Seattle’s) Kacie Sowell and played big. That’s what we needed from her.”
With freshman Karlee Wilson already out with injury, Idaho only has eight active players until Reilly returns. The Vandals still have two games remaining on the regular season schedule, but depth could become a problem if Reilly isn’t back heading into the WAC Tournament.
“I’m worried about Brooke (Reilly). She’s got that hip problem and she’s out, she’s on the indefinite right now,” Newlee said. “That did hurt us. We’ve got great trainers here, doctors, and hopefully they’ll get Brooke going and ready at least by Las Vegas.”
With the physical rivalry game against Seattle behind them and the No. 1 seed clinched, the Vandals face last-place Chicago State on Thursday, before wrapping up against Missouri-Kansas City on Saturday.
“We got to continue to practice hard and play hard,” Newlee said. “You can’t take time off. It’s not like the NFL where the guys don’t play before the playoff game. We got to keep playing, we got to keep our rhythm going.”
Stephan Wiebe can be reached at [email protected]