What a wild end of the season for the Idaho men’s basketball team.
After starting the WAC schedule 2-6, the team improved greatly in its last stretch of games — ending the season 5-3 and securing the No. 5 seed for the WAC Tournament.
In Las Vegas, the pressure was on the team who had not won a WAC Tournament game since Don Verlin had been hired as Idaho’s coach in 2008.
With history on their minds, Idaho was able to shock fans by winning not one, but two games over the course of the tournament and was able to advance to the conference title game against New Mexico State.
Although the outcome of the title game was unfortunate, the Vandals definitely impressed in the tournament as well as the last half of the season. One can only hope that some of what was seen at the end of the season will be seen next season, when Idaho moves to the Big Sky Conference.
Idaho only loses three seniors after this year, while also returning six players that played significant time over the season.
Losing Stephen Madison is certainly going to be a blow. It’s always hard to replace a player that was a legitimate snub for WAC Player of the Year.
But the team can ease the loss of Madison with players like Mike Scott, Connor Hill and Sekou Wiggs, who were right behind Madison in points per game on the season.
With the offensive side projecting positivity, the defensive end of the floor could really use improvement.
In many games last season, the Vandals were outrebounded while also giving up 74.6 points per game — which was good for 285th in the nation. The times Idaho was able to outrebound teams, Madison would be at the top of the rebound list.
Verlin should be looking to recruit a couple of players that will have a big defensive presence for this team. A couple of players that would be able to clog the lane, making it harder to drive the basket and force the opposing team to take bad shots outside of the paint.
The players don’t even have to be that good on the offensive end. As long as they can get it done for the Vandals on defense, they could make this team dangerous.
Of course, the team could already have the pieces to get better at the defensive end with Ty Egbert and Paulin Mpawe coming back next season. They are two players who fans need to watch out for in the future.
If the Vandals could get better on the defensive side of the floor while remaining consistent on the offensive side, this team could not only contend for the Big Sky regular season title, but they could contend to win the Big Sky Tournament and make the Big Dance for the first time since 1990.
Rick Clark can be reached at [email protected]