Shorthanded Idaho women beat Eastern 74-67, advance to WBI semifinals

There’s a new motto on the Idaho women’s basketball team: “Eight strong.”

The short-handed Vandals were plenty strong Monday night, claiming a 74-67 win at Eastern Washington that sends them to the semifinals of the Women’s Basketball Invitational.

Remarkably, three of Jon Newlee’s players – Karlee Wilson, Taylor Pierce and Mikayla Ferenz – went all 40 minutes in a never-quit moment that will be talked about in Moscow for a long time.

“I couldn’t be more proud of these eight – they played like true Vandals tonight,” said Newlee, who actually needed only seven of them against the Eagles.

“We were really focused and loose and we came in with nothing to lose,” said Newlee, whose team will play at Rice in a semifinal game on Thursday.

Two weeks ago, the Vandals journeyed with 13 players to the Big Sky Conference tournament in Reno, Nev., falling in the quarterfinals on March 8 to this same Eastern team.

Shortly after the tournament, Newlee dismissed two players for “conduct detrimental to the program” during the time in Reno.

At the same time, two other players left the team “to concentrate on their studies,” Newlee added.

The four absent players are Brigitte O’Neill, a sophomore post from Melbourne, Australia; Daylee Hanson, a freshman guard form Edmonds, Wash.; Agueda Trujillo, a senior guard from Manacor, Spain; and Sue Winger, a freshman post from Spokane’s Mead High School.

Asked for details, Newlee refused to specify which players were dismissed and which ones left voluntarily.

However, senior guard Karlee Wilson said that Winger left on her own.

“She just decided that basketball wasn’t for her, but that’s OK,” Wilson said of Winger.

Meanwhile, the Vandals (19-14) lost another player, Bethany Krause, to a foot injury, leaving Newlee with just eight healthy players for their first-round WBI win last week over Utah State.

However, no Vandal had to go the distance in that one. It would be different against the Eagles, who had taken two of three from Idaho this year.

Eastern (19-14) had plenty to play for at Reese Court. A win would mean a third-straight 20-win season and the right to host Rice in the semifinals, because EWU had the highest RPI of any team left in the field.

That wasn’t enough on Monday, especially the way UI guard Ferenz was shooting the long ball.

“It felt good in warm-ups and it felt good all game,” said Ferenz, who scored a game-high 33 points on 12-for-24 shooting from the field.

Ferenz, the Big Sky scoring leader, hit a trio of 3-pointers early to give Idaho an early 11-4 lead.

“When she hit that first shot, I thought ‘let’s get this thing going,” Newlee said. “She’s hard to guard with her range, but everybody did a good job of moving and cutting.”

Brooke Reilly added another three to push the lead to 19-8 late in the first, but Eastern rallied in the second quarter to trail 36-31 at intermission.

Idaho came out strong after the halftime breather, getting its biggest lead of the night, 45-31 on a trey by Geraldine McCorkell.

Then the Vandals fell apart – though not from fatigue, Newlee said.

“We just got lazy with the basketball,” said Newlee, who watched his team commit three of its nine turnovers in a 2 ½ minute span.

EWU’s Delaney Hodgins, the Eagles’ scoring lead with 18, tied the game at 45, the crowd roared and Idaho seemed to sag a bit.

His team down 51-50 going into the fourth quarter, Newlee told his team, “They made their run, we need to make ours.”

And the Vandals did, shooting 9-for-17 from the field and outrebounding the Eagles 12 to eight.

Eastern still had a chance at the end. Down 68-65 with 59 seconds left, senior guard Tisha Phillips missed an open 3-pointer and Pierce got the rebound.

Ferenz hit four foul shots in the last 15 seconds to wrap up the game.