Griz outmuscle Vandals

Idaho women’s basketball team faces uphill battle to make Big Sky Tournament

Normally, getting 27 points from the team’s best player and a double digit lead at halftime is a recipe for an upset against the conference’s top team.

However, after a sluggish start to the second half and a few key players getting into foul trouble, including four members of the starting five, Idaho’s upset bid came up short as the Montana Grizzlies pulled away late to maintain their lead in the Big Sky by a final score of 87-74.

The Vandals currently sit at 11th overall in the conference with a 3-7 record. Unlike their last two seasons in the WAC, they need a late season run to even advance to the conference tournament.

“We need to start winning games or else we aren’t going to make it to the tournament,” senior guard Stacey Barr said. “That is probably the biggest thing. I think we are doing it to ourselves really.”

Barr currently leads the Big Sky in scoring with more than 20 points per game including three consecutive outings with at least 25 points.

The Vandals will look to get on the winning track Thursday when they travel to Oregon to take on Portland State. The Vikings are the only team behind Idaho in the standings, sitting at 3-19 overall and 1-10 in conference play.

In the first half Saturday, the Idaho offense was humming, which was a far cry from Thursday night when they shot less than 30 percent on the night in a loss to Montana State.

Then halftime hit. This was when the Grizzlies came out firing. The Big Sky leader quickly erased the Vandals’ 11-point lead thanks to some physical play down low.

“Once they went on that run, we needed to stop and make our own run — which we didn’t — which was disappointing,” Barr said. “That first four or six minutes was what kind of killed it for us.”

The physicality the Grizzlies brought in the second half changed the way the game flowed and put Idaho in some tough spots, Newlee said.

“I thought at times we lost our composure because it became such a physical fight, because they were desperate,” he said. “They wanted to turn it into that and they did … and they won.”

The Montana offense, predicated on posting up the guards, was punishing Idaho’s smaller guards — namely Connie Ballestero and Karlee Wilson, who are both undersized by NCAA Division I standards. Ballestero stands at 5-foot-9 while Wilson is 5-foot-4.

After shooting 60 percent from the field in the first half, the Vandals shot an abysmal 25 percent in the second. Montana conversely went from 41.8 percent to 48.3 percent in the second half.

“We kind of went away from what we were doing in the first half,” Newlee said. “In the first half, we were sharing the basketball … We built the lead and then too much one-on-one. We aren’t a one-on-one team.”

In the first half, there were stretches where it seemed like Idaho couldn’t miss. Barr hit one 3-pointer that would’ve been good from NBA range, but in the second half they weren’t so lucky.

“It is always frustrating when they are going in the first half and then we are coming out and getting the same looks and they aren’t going in,” Wilson said.

The Vandals also had to deal with the length Montana brought. In an attempt to combat this, Newlee changed up the way he used the rotation, and with the foul trouble Ali Forde has struggled with for most of the season, it forced his hand a little earlier than he would’ve liked.

“Ali’s foul trouble has been a season long thing,” Newlee said. “I made a different decision to go to with Tayla (Corrigan) to get some size in there to go against their size and get her some more minutes … It was a conscious decision going in anyway, but then when Ali’s foul trouble and Connie’s foul trouble really forced my hand earlier.”

Idaho has eight regular season games left on the schedule to get back on track in Big Sky play.

Joshua Gamez can be reached at [email protected]