Idaho Vandal-izes Wolf Pack in WAC opener

BY JOE SANTORO

Special to the Nevada Appeal

RENO " The Nevada Wolf Pack's New Year's Eve hangover is now four days old and counting.

  "We had no energy, we made a lot of mistakes," guard Brandon Fields said after a stunning 78-73 Western Athletic Conference-opening loss to the Idaho Vandals Saturday night at Lawlor Events Center. "This was just a bad loss for the team."

  Idaho, after winning just seven WAC games the past three years, was picked to finish last again this year by the league's coaches and media.

  "I'm extremely disappointed," said Pack coach Mark Fox, whose team was coming off a physically draining and emotional loss to top-ranked North Carolina on New Year's Eve. "Take nothing away from Idaho. They came out and outplayed us. But we didn't play well at all. Ever."

  The Pack had only brief moments of success in its first game of the new year. A basket in the lane and a free throw by Malik Cooke gave Nevada its first lead at 47-45 with 12 minutes, 12 seconds to play. That lead, though, lasted all of 10 seconds.

  A pair of free throws each by Armon Johnson and Cooke gave the Pack its biggest lead at 65-62 with 2:48 to play. Once again, though, the fun didn't last.

  The Vandals dominated the next two minutes. A pair of Wolf Pack turnovers, sandwiched around two free throws by Kashif Watson, gave Idaho a 66-65 lead with 1:53 to go. Watson then drove past the Pack's Joey Shaw on the baseline for a 68-65 lead and a three-point play by Luciano De Souza sent a large portion of the crowd of 6,064 headed to the exits with 31 seconds to play.

  "For a young basketball team that we have," said first-year Idaho coach Don Verlin, whose Vandals are now 7-7 this season, "that's about as good as we can play."

"They are a much better team (than in recent years)," Fox said. "Their personnel is better. It's a different culture."

  Fox, though, struggled to find anything else positive to say after the loss.

"This was a college game and we are a high school team right now," said Fox of the 7-7, 0-1 Wolf Pack. "This is a college team and we're not playing like one. We played with no determination, didn't defend and didn't execute offensively."

  Fox said the Pack's disappointing effort went beyond a lack of energy.

  "Energy is certainly important," he said. "And we didn't have a lot. But our concentration wasn't there either."

  Fields supplied much of the Pack's energy early in the game, scoring 10 quick points in the first nine minutes. The junior also pulled down a rebound, drove the length of the court and scored in the lane for a 61-60 Pack lead with 3:45 to play. Cooke also played well, scoring 13 of his 17 points in the second half.

  "They (the Vandals) are a good team," said Fields, who finished with a game-high 19 points, "and they wanted it more than us."

  Fields tossed the ball over Johnson's head at mid-court and into the crowd for a costly turnover with 2:11 to play and missed a 3-pointer with just under a minute to play and the Pack trailing 68-65. The junior missed six of his seven 3-pointers on the night.

  "He scared the heck out of me going into the game because of how good he is," Verlin said. "But I thought we got him to make some tough shots. I thought we got him to rely on the 3-point line a little bit too much and that played in our favor."

  Also playing into the Vandals' favor was the way they defended the Pack's top two scorers, Johnson and Luke Babbitt. The two former northern Nevada prep stars combined to shoot 4-for-19 from the field and score 14 points, 16.5 under their combined average this season going into the game. Babbitt, who led the Pack with 22 points against North Carolina, finished with just five points, none in the second half, and also had a crucial turnover down the stretch.

  "We've got to grow up and we will," Fox said. "It's a process and it's sometimes painful. But we took some terrible shots and we played very immaturely."

  Idaho, which shot 52 percent from the field, had five players reach double figures in scoring. Hopson and De Souza led the way with 16 each. The win was the first for Idaho in a WAC opener since joining the conference before the 2005-06 season.

  "The thing I was most happy with was we battled every possession," Verlin said. "We didn't have a lot of lost possessions.