The Idaho men’s basketball team was unable to stay in control of Thursday’s game against Stanford, falling 86-80 late in the second half in California.
“I wish we could’ve finished the job tonight,” Idaho head coach Don Verlin said in a news release. “I thought our guys gave a heck of an effort tonight. For 30 minutes we were as good as we’ve been, which is a real positive for us. I thought late in the game, they were able to attack that zone a little bit more efficiently.”
The Vandals started the game by hitting their first six 3-point attempts. Junior guard Victor Sanders sunk four 3’s in the opening ten minutes.
The Vandals led throughout the first half and kept a six-point lead into the break.
Idaho led by nine points to start the second half, but Stanford woke up and took the lead.
Freshman guard Tyler Brimhall earned a career-high 13 points on 4-of-7 shooting. Junior guard Victor Sanders led Idaho with 17 points and 5 3-pointers. Junior forward Brayon Blake added 14 points with 6-of-9 shooting.
The Vandals shot 48 percent from inside and outside and score 13 3-pointers, the second most in a game this season and one less of the most ever by a team coached by Verlin.
“I thought our guys played extremely hard,” Verlin said. “They executed the gameplan extremely well and you know, if you get a couple open looks to go down and it’s a different story here tonight.”
Thursday’s loss closes nonconference play for Idaho.
The Vandals return after the holidays to take on regional-rival Eastern Washington, 7 p.m. Dec. 30 at the Cowan Spectrum.
Tess Fox can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @tesstakesphotos