Aggies provide a major obstacle for Vandals
On a number of levels, Idaho men’s basketball coach George Pfeifer is tickled that his team garnered the sixth seed in the Western Athletic Conference tournament.
At times the Vandals have been competitive with every WAC team this season. What makes Idaho’s quarterfinal matchup tonight difficult isn’t so much that it is against the third seed. It’s the fact that the Vandals face defending tourney champ New Mexico State on its home court – the site of Idaho’s worst conference defeat.
Idaho (8-20) meets the Aggies (19-13) at 7:30 in the Pan American Center.
In their WAC opener in early January, the Vandals fell to visiting NMSU 78-68. A month later in Las Cruces, N.M., the Aggies smothered Idaho 88-49. NMSU threw a press at the Vandals, and they weren’t prepared for it.
“We have to answer the question with New Mexico State with the press,” Pfeifer said. “The press crushed us last time. That was the bottom line. They did a lot of other things and they’ve got all kinds of weapons, but at the end of the day we didn’t handle the press.”
Idaho senior forward Michael Crowell missed the game at NMSU with a concussion. He watched from the bench as the Aggies overwhelmed his teammates.
“Everybody looked lost,” Crowell said. “Their press really killed us. That sped us up too much and we were taking bad shots. They were getting easy shots from our bad shots and turnovers.”
Playing NMSU is perhaps akin to running the hurdles in track. The Vandals may clear one obstacle, but they’ll encounter several others along the way.
“Once you answer the hurdle about their press, you need to make sure you’re back on defense, you need to make sure that you’re neutralizing them on the boards and then offensively you need to be efficient,” Pfeifer said. “And that’s not easy to do, either, because they’ve got such length around the basket that once you penetrate, we might beat the guy that’s guarding you out front but there’s another gauntlet. There’s the press gauntlet, the guy that’s athletic in front of you plus the height back in front of the rim.”
NMSU – which finished in a four-way tie with Utah State, Boise State and Nevada for the conference title – has won eight of its last nine games. In that stretch, the Aggies have won six games at home, averaging 93.5 points and holding opponents to 63.8. That’s nearly a 30-point margin of victory.
Six Aggies average in double figures. Leading the way is 6-foot-8 senior Justin Hawkins, who is averaging 17.7 points. He had a career-high 37 in the Aggies’ 106-71 win over visiting Hawaii in a regular-season finale last Saturday.
“We feel real good about the fact that we were picked last in the conference and we finished sixth,” Pfeifer said. “Our reward is we’ve got to go face a very talented New Mexico State team (without) any real foreseeable weakness.”
Notes
Idaho junior point guard Jordan Brooks returns after a one-game suspension for what Pfeifer called conduct detrimental to the team. … Brooks leads the Vandals in scoring (12.8), rebounding (6.3), assists (4.8) and steals (1.7). … The Vandals must be prepared to rebound. NMSU outrebounded Hawaii 65-29 last Saturday. “Our goal was 66, so we fell a little short,” quipped first-year Aggies coach Marvin Menzies. … Former Pullman High standout Fred Peete, a senior guard, averages 10.7 ppg for the Aggies.