Idaho men earn No. 15 seed in South Region, will open NCAA Tournament against second-seeded Houston

After waiting 36 years to get back to the NCAA Tournament, it was only fitting that the Idaho men’s basketball team was the last team to hear their name called on Selection Sunday.

Or as senior guard Isaiah Brickner said midway through the bracket reveal on CBS, “it’s like Christmas morning and your parents told you that you can’t open presents yet.”

The gift that was their March Madness draw finally came in the final matchup announced as the Vandals earned the No. 15 seed in the South Region, and will take on second-seeded Houston in Thursday’s opening round at 7:10 p.m. PST in Oklahoma City.

The team learned their fate Sunday afternoon at ICCU Arena in Moscow, surrounded by hundreds of fans and family members. The gasps were audible throughout the arena each time a 14, 15 or 16 seed was announced without the Vandals name being shown.

But for third-year coach Alex Pribble, the wait was well worth it looking back at where this program was just a few years ago when he took over.

“I’m just filled with an incredible, incredible sense of gratitude right now,” Pribble said. “I walked in this building three years ago, gave a press conference right upstairs up there, and talked about a vision for what Idaho men’s basketball could be. And that vision was bringing in high character young men who would represent this university well.”

If the Vandals (21-14) can pull off an upset on the Cougars (28-6) they would face the winner of Thursday’s first round contest between seventh-seeded Saint Mary’s and No. 10-seeded Texas A&M on Saturday at Paycom Center.

Idaho was likely looking at a 15-seed coming into the day according to Bracket Matrix, where the Vandals had an average seeding of 14.85 across 123 online brackets – although several prominent sites also had Idaho as a 14-seed. The loudest sigh of relief Sunday came once the final No. 16 seeds were shown and Idaho was not included.

“I mean you can’t not look, because it’s all over your phone,” Brickner said of the bracket projections. “So we were definitely looking over the last couple days trying to see who we might be playing.

“And getting to play Houston, it’s going to be so exciting. I’m really excited to play a high-level team like that and just go out and show what we can do,” Brickner added.

The Vandals will get a Houston team coming off a five-point loss in the Big 12 Tournament championship game against Arizona – the top seed in the West Region – and which is coached by former Washington State coach Kelvin Sampson.

The Cougars also sport a bit of the Gem State on their roster, as freshman guard Isiah Harwell is from Pocatello.

“We have to be us and play to our identity,” Pribble said. “But when you have a challenge in a team like Houston and you know what their identity is, we know we will have to be very smart with the way we take care of the basketball.”

Redshirt sophomore guard Kolton Mitchell – who is from Coeur d’Alene – said that although the Vandals were able to string together four wins in five days at the Big Sky Tournament in Boise last week to secure the NCAA bid, he believes Idaho has yet to play its best basketball.

“The biggest thing is we have to shoot the ball better,” Mitchell said. “We shot the ball horrendously from 3 the whole tournament and to be able to win the tournament while shooting that bad shows a lot about our team.”

Idaho will ride a five-game winning streak into the program’s first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1990, with a victory over Eastern Washington to end the regular season, and then wins over Sacramento State, Montana State, EWU and finally Montana to win the Big Sky Tournament as the No. 7 seed.

In that tournament, Idaho had a different leading scorer in each of the four games, a level of depth and scoring diversity Pribble believes will help the Vandals moving forward.

“There’s something special about this team. You know, just being around the game for as long as I have been, you get a sense when a team has the right kind of character, the right kind of work ethic, the right kind of habits,” Pribble said. “We felt great about this team since the summer, and the year was kind of up and down, you know, and they had to be a resilient group.”

That group will now try and open the NCAA Tournament the same way the opened the regular season – with an upset victory over the Cougars. But this time instead of the opponent being Washington State, it’ll be one of the top teams in the country in Houston.

“I feel like after we won the (Big Sky) championship we kind of have been this happy, go lucky, you know, just celebrating a little bit,” freshman forward Jackson Rasmussen said. “But now that’s kind of locking in on who we are playing. It’s like flipping the switch and changing our mindset locking in for the game.”