As a gangly 6-foot-9 freshman basketball player in 2013, Ty Egbert saw the Western Athletic Conference as a valuable athletic classroom, a post-oriented league where he could roll up his sleeves and hone his skills. "It was a lot more big-boy basketball," the University of Idaho junior recalled. His older, weightier teammates "were always big-boying me, and I thought, 'This is what I'd like to do.' "Three years later, Egbert is adjusting to the faster, breezier rhythms of the Big Sky Conference, where last year the Vandals moved all their sports except football, re-establishing ties to a league they'd fled in 1996. Egbert believes the transition has made him a better athlete. Meanwhile, like other members of the UI men's and women's basketball teams, he thinks the more intimate, regional feel of the Big Sky has lightened his load a bit. No matter what position you played, life in the WAC was getting rugged when the Vandals left, especially in terms of travel/Dale Grummert, Lewiston Tribune. More here.

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