The Idaho women’s basketball team hit the court in the Cowan Spectrum to take on conference rivals Eastern Washington. While the game got off to a close start the Vandals shut down the Eagles, earning a 78-51 victory.
Idaho head coach Jon Newlee said he thought the defensive effort helped the Vandals grab the win.
“I thought we brought a lot of good defensive energy tonight, followed the game plan,” Newlee said. “They are a very dangerous team and they have three players, who can really score in bunches and score quickly. Wendy (Schuller) does a great job with them so as to be able to play defense the way we did tonight was, should give us a lot of confidence.”
Eastern Washington jumped out early in the game to grab the lead over Idaho. The Eagles held the lead for the opening minutes of the game before a free throw from sophomore guard Mikayla Ferenz tied the game at 10-10 and kickstarted the Vandals’ momentum. The Vandals held an eight-point lead over the Eagles at the half, 35-27.
On top for the Idaho offense was sophomore guard Taylor Pierce with 12 points and an 80 percent completion from beyond the arc, making four of her five attempts.
Leading the way for the Eagles was Delaney Hodgins with 10 points in the first half.
Newlee said the team learned from mistakes from the last matchup and used it to help them get the edge in the second go-around.
“It was just a good team defensive effort,” Newlee said. “Instead of kind of putting them out on an island and saying, ‘Ok you have to guard Hodgins and you gotta take over Payne, and it’s you one-on-one’ and I think we did that up in Cheney and we didn’t do a very good job of that. We wanted to get these guys with team defense tonight instead of just one-on-one stuff.”
Ferenz echoed Newlee’s sentiments. Ferenz said she looked at the game as a payback game.
“I think we were really embarrassed about how we played over there and so we knew we owed them,” Ferenz said.
The second half was a full team effort with 10 of 12 Idaho athletes scoring and all playing in the final 20 minutes.
A layup from Pierce in the first minute of the half put Idaho up 10 points and the team ran with it from there. The Vandals topped the opponents by as many as 30 points in the closing minutes of play.
Pierce came out strong again in the second half to continue putting up points before she and the rest of the starters were pulled off the court and the bench was sent out.
Pierce held the top spot on the Idaho offense, finishing the night with 23 points, including seven made 3-pointers. Ferenz was close behind with 18 points.
Junior post Geraldine McCorkell came out with 10 points but grabbed a team-high 11 rebounds.
The Eagles offense was led by Hodgins who added four more points from the first half to finish with 14 on the night.
Newlee said he thinks the Vandals upset win was an important one for the team.
“I thought it was really big. We knew coming in, we needed to win one we needed to win at home two we needed to get one back from Eastern (Washington),” Newlee said. “Going in we knew this was a big win for us.”
McCorkell said the big win over the Eagles only makes the post-season more exciting.
“It was pretty big because we have always been rivals with Idaho State and Eastern (Washington),” McCorkell said. “I think it just makes it more exciting going into Reno. To top off Eastern (Washington) the way we did tonight was pretty special because we’ve always had that rivalry and how we played against them last time wasn’t the way we wanted it to go so to be playing like the way we are now I think is exciting for us because I think we are starting to peak and starting to get things going”.
Idaho heads on the road to face in-state rival Idaho State 6 p.m. Feb. 23 in Pocatello, Idaho.
Meredith Spelbring can be reached at [email protected]