Vandals hit road in CIT

MOSCOW, Idaho – For Stew Morrill and Don Verlin, postseason appearances at Utah State were always plentiful.

Scratching out wins once there? That was another matter.

“I’ve been in the postseason the last 10 years, not as a head coach but as assistant, and we won one time,” said Verlin, a former USU aide under Morrill and first-year Idaho head coach. “Postseason wins don’t come very often.”

Which is why he and every other Vandal took an extra few blissful moments to savor Wednesday’s first-round victory in the CollegeInsider.com tournament. Sure, the inaugural mid-major event lacks prestige, but it still carries plenty of weight to participating teams.

And it would be difficult to find a club that values its experience in the CIT more than Idaho. After years of being an afterthought, the program notched its first postseason triumph since 1982 by downing Drake in Moscow on Wednesday.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, playing in the postseason,” Idaho senior guard Trevor Morris said. “You just got to take advantage of it.”

Tonight at 7, the Vandals (17-15) will try to extend their bonus season when they tussle with Pacific. The quarterfinal matchup with the Big West Conference school will be at the Spanos Center in Stockton, Calif., where Verlin’s twin brother, Ron, is the associate head coach for the Tigers.

The brotherly reunion comes just days after Don Verlin gave the Pacific staff footage of UI’s early-season matchup with Portland, which fell to the Tigers on Wednesday to set up tonight’s meeting.

“Obviously it’s a staff I know very well,” Don Verlin said. “It will be a lot of fun. A hard place to win, but (it will be) a lot of fun to go down and get after them.”

This won’t just be a memorable showdown for the Verlins. Idaho redshirt guard Steffan Johnson, who’s sitting out this year, transferred from Pacific after being an All-Big West player last season.

The Tigers (20-12) have developed into a top-flight Big West program under coach Bob Thomason, recording at least 20 wins in six of the past seven years. This season they came just short of capturing their conference tournament title. Cal State Northridge clipped Pacific in overtime to claim the NCAA tournament berth.

The Vandals have mustered only four breakthroughs on the road this season. Three of those wins, over Western Athletic Conference foes Nevada, Boise State and Fresno State, came by a total of 10 points, so tonight figures to be a serious challenge.

The Vandals have won seven of their past nine games, and even a major trouble spot for much of the year, free-throw shooting, has dramatically improved. The Vandals have canned 42 of 53 (79 percent) attempts from the foul line in the past three games.

Against Drake, Idaho showcased an especially crisp offense, with 19 assists on 25 field goals with only 10 turnovers.

“I thought we played one of our best games of the year from an offensive standpoint,” Verlin said. “I thought we passed it as well as we’ve passed it all year. … We really shared the ball well.”

Notes

The other quarterfinal CIT games are Belmont versus Old Dominion, James Madison versus Liberty and Oakland versus Bradley. Semifinal pairings will be announced after the quarterfinals are complete.