Idaho men may have been overmatched, but they never backed away from Houston in NCAA Tournament | Analysis
OKLAHOMA CITY — With his Idaho men’s basketball team trailing Houston by 24 points early in the second of their NCAA Tournament opener Thursday, Kolton Mitchell delivered a much-needed March moment for the Vandals.
Mitchell hit a wing 3-pointer in front of his own bench while being fouled by Houston senior Emanuel Sharpe, then completing the four-point play to cut the deficit to 20.
It would be as close as the 15th-seeded Vandals would get the rest of the way against second-seeded Houston in a 78-47 loss at Paycom Center, but it showed a level of resiliency and grit that got this Idaho team to the big dance for the first time since 1990.
“I think the biggest thing is just the culture,” Mitchell said. “We’ve talked a lot about just building our culture here, and I think our foundation and our culture has been built. We have a championship culture now at Idaho, and the expectation is the expectation. You know, we expect to win championships now.
“So going in, the guys who we’ll recruit and get here are going to be expected to work their butts off, and if it’s not a championship, then that’s down to our standards going forward.”
What makes Mitchell’s 14-point performance against the nation’s second-best defense even more impressive is the fact that he has been playing since mid-February with a pair of broken ribs.
But that is the kind of mental and physical toughness that was necessary for Idaho’s Cinderella run to the NCAAs to occur.
After struggling to string together wins in the regular season, the Vandals (21-15) topped Eastern Washington in Cheney to cap the Big Sky slate, before running through the conference tournament as the No. 7 seed to earn one of the NCAA Tournament’s more-surprising berths.
“Winning the Big Sky tournament the way they won it, winning four games in five days is a tremendous accomplishment, something that they should be really proud of,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said to start his news conference Thursday evening. “It’s hard to make this tournament. It’s really hard. There are so many good teams that don’t get a chance to play in this. Coach Pribble’s kids were well-coached. They had a good plan. They fought. They played really hard, and they scrapped. Congratulations to those guys. I wish them nothing but the best going forward.”
Idaho coach Alex Pribble said he appreciated the words from the former Washington State coach, who brought his record to 4-5 all-time against Idaho.
Pribble said that while many young coaches look to model their style after Sampson — who is a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame finalist this year, he wants to also model this Idaho program after the Cougars and the toughness they play with.
“His programs are studied by coaches like me, right? I’ve done everything I could to try to get some of his practice film and his game film and pick his coaches’ brains about the way they generate such a unique identity in college basketball,” Pribble said. “Anybody that wants to make their program tougher, they look at Houston. Anybody that wants to make their program more physical, they look at Houston.”
That level of physicality was the most stark difference between the Big Sky champ and last year’s NCAA runner-up in their first-round contest, especially on the defensive side of the ball.
The Cougars (29-6) held Idaho to its lowest scoring output of the season by 16 points (the previous low was 63 against Cal State Bakersfield in December), along with Idaho’s lowest field-goal percentage (28.6%) and third-lowest 3-point percentage (20%) of the year.
But there were also flashes where Idaho showed why they made the field of 68, particularly in the opening minutes of each half.
Mitchell and senior guard Biko Johnson hit 3-pointers, sandwiched by Jackson Rasmussen baskets to give Idaho the 10-7 lead at the first media timeout, sending the several hundred Idaho fans in attendance into a frenzy.
“I would say we came out in attack mode,” Johnson said. “We were ready. We were ready to fight, ready to compete, and we were just standing together in the first four minutes, which is why the score was what it was.”
But that is when a flip switched for the Cougars, who went on a 26-5 run after that first break, which All-American guard Kingston Flemings credits to the Cougars ramping up their defensive intensity.
“I mean, starting the game, they’re a good team, obviously making it to the tournament,” Flemings said. “We won the tip, I had a bad turnover. Should have shot the shot and ended up fumbling the ball. I think, you know, when we really started getting our is when we started playing defense. That’s what always happened. Defense and rebounding, and then we can start scoring on the offensive end.”
What makes this run even more impressive for the Vandals was how they were able to overcome the trials they faced throughout the season. From losing starting guard Kristian Gonzalez at the start of the year to a season-ending injury, to losing by double figures at home to Weber State and finally Mitchell’s injury, Idaho had every reason to quit on the season.
The fact that they didn’t might be indication enough that their next NCAA Tournament berth won’t come 36 years from now.