North Idaho men aim to get fourth shot at CSI

It is not often that you can lose to your rival three times in a season, twice in overtime, and have an opportunity for postseason revenge – on your home floor.

Welcome to the world of North Idaho College men’s basketball.

The Cardinals are home for the Region 18 tournament – courtesy of a regular-season championship by the NIC women – and if everything goes according to seeding, they’ll encounter rival College of Southern Idaho in Saturday’s championship game. The teams shared the Scenic West Athletic Conference title, but CSI (22-8) is the top seed on the basis of its 3-0 record against NIC (23-7).

First things first. NIC has a bye until Friday at 8 p.m. when it takes on the winner of today’s Dixie-Colorado Northwestern game. CSI, ranked 20th in the latest NJCAA poll, awaits the winner of today’s Eastern Utah-Snow contest.

“We are done (kicking ourselves),” Cardinals coach Jared Phay said over the deflating losses to CSI. “We look at the overall picture and we won the Salt Lake game by two and we beat Snow in overtime. There have been a lot of games that we could have easily lost.”

When NIC takes the floor Friday, it will have gone 13 days between games.

“In practice we just keep trying to simulate the game and we work just about every day on our sets to keep that rhythm,” Phay said. “My biggest concern is that we’d get out of sync.”

NIC features a balanced attack with guard Mac Hopson (13.8 points per game), forward Darin Nagle (13.4) and wing Frank Clair (13.1). The Cardinals lead the SWAC in scoring defense (69.6).

CSI, the top-scoring team in the conference at 83.9, relies on Travis Gabbidon (16.5), Zarryon Fereti (14.5) and Reggie Larry (14.1). Salt Lake, which finished third in the conference and handed NIC and CSI a combined three losses, was banned from the tournament after it was discovered the Bruins used an ineligible player a few years ago.

Dixie (19-11), which was 2-4 against NIC and CSI, outrebounded opponents by 11 per game. Eastern Utah (18-11) has five players averaging in double figures.

Snow (10-20) is led by Geoff Payne, who scored 41 points against NIC earlier this season and hung 32 and 31 against CSI in games last weekend. Colorado Northwestern (4-26) was winless in the SWAC, but had close calls against Dixie (87-86) and Snow (92-90).

For the Cardinals, there is little downside to playing host to the tournament. The crowd should be pro-NIC, the rims will be familiar to the players and they won’t have to hop on a plane or sit on a bus to get to the venue.

Phay doesn’t even mind that his wallet seems to get lighter by the day.

“I’ve got a bunch of ticket requests,” he said. “The other day I had to go buy like $136 worth of tickets for family and friends. I’m over $200 on tickets. I just feel weird going over there and buying tickets. They ask, ‘What are these for?’ And I say, ‘Uh, my game.’ “

Phay has fielded 15-20 requests from four-year coaches, including representatives from Georgia, Washington State, South Florida, Idaho and several other WAC schools, and Illinois State.