Idaho Basketball: What to expect from the Vandals in 2020-21?

Idaho Basketball is coming off an eight-win season and is currently on a two-year probation. But, for Zac Claus and his team, they might have the manpower needed to pull off the redemption arc in the Big Sky.

After being levied numerous penalties by the NCAA, Idaho Basketball will embark on one of the toughest attempts at redemption imaginable in college basketball.  Under second-year head coach Zac Claus and in a conference as wide-open as the Big Sky, however, that climb is very much possible.

Two things need to be stated while diving into the Vandals.  Firstly, Idaho’s current predicament regarding NCAA violations has made making predictions for the future difficult.  Don Verlin, the head coach for the Vandals for 11 years, was fired for cause in 2019 after the NCAA uncovered issues relating to managers and pick-up sessions.  Nothing groundbreaking was unveiled, but it was still enough to cost Verlin his job and force a two-year probation period on the Idaho men’s basketball program.

For what it is worth, despite the infractions, it is hard to dispute the job Verlin did at Idaho.  He consistently had solid seasons during the six-year period when the Vandals were in the Western Athletic Conference and the five years that followed in the Big Sky.  He finished his career with a 177-176 record.

Verlin’s final two seasons were polar opposites – he enjoyed his greatest success with the Vandals in 2017-18 with a 22-9 record but was plagued in 2018-19 with his worst season at 5-27.  Subsequently, Verlin was fired, and interim head coach Zac Claus – who was Verlin’s assistant for three years – was not left with much to work with.

Claus’s first season was a struggle, but the Vandals had a slight improvement at 8-24 overall with a 4-16 mark in Big Sky play, tied with Idaho State at the bottom.  Two of those eight wins came against NAIA schools, but the Vandals did pick up a significant victory on the road at Eastern Washington, the league’s top team.

The second thing that needs to be mentioned is regarding the Big Sky Conference, as a whole.  The Big Sky is, truthfully, one of the more unremarkable conferences in Division I when it comes to postseason success, particularly in the past decade.

That is not meant as a knock on the Big Sky.  The conference has turned out two of the most sensational players in all of college basketball this past decade: Eastern Washington was home to Tyler Harvey, the Div. I national scoring leader his junior season in 2015, and Weber State had a four-year point guard by the name of Damian Lillard.

But the winners of the Big Sky championship have routinely gone on and been gutted in the NCAA tournament.  Montana’s loss to Syracuse in the 2013 tournament was the most lopsided win by a team seeded third or lower in the history of the tournament – the 13th-seeded Grizzlies lost to the 4th-seeded Orange, 81-34.  The Big Sky’s closest game in the tournament was the following season when 16th-seeded Weber State lost to Arizona by nine.

To add fuel to the fire, Idaho has not qualified for the NCAA tournament since current Ole Miss head coach Kermit Davis led them there in back-to-back seasons in 1988-89 and 1989-90.  Their only postseason success since then has come under Verlin, who took the Vandals to the CIT four times and the CBI once.

The lack of national success for the Big Sky and lack of accomplishment for the Vandals makes Claus’s job even harder, but Idaho administration is willing to buy into what he can build after removing his interim title ahead of this season.

Idaho Basketball’s roster for 2020-21

That success will be difficult for Claus to find, however.  The Vandals return seven players from last year’s roster of 13.  Trevon Allen, the team’s leading scorer last year at 21.6 points per game, has graduated.  Scott Blakney, the team’s returning leading scorer at 8.2, will be expected to step up and carry most of the hole left by Allen’s departure.

Blakney and his fellow returners will not necessarily be alone in their climb back to success.  Claus and his staff have brought on five newcomers for this year’s team, including offensive playmaker Hunter Madden.  Madden, a 6-1 guard out of Sydney, Australia, led his high school team in scoring, rebounding, and assists at 24.7 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 4.5 assists per game.

Kendall McHugh, a transfer out of the College of Southern Idaho, will also be another incoming 6-foot guard that will be placed alongside Madden on the floor.  McHugh averaged nearly 11 points a game while at Southern Idaho, and both Madden and McHugh will ideally serve as complementary pieces to the bigger Blakney, who dominated in and around the paint last season with a 58% shooting clip on field goals.

Claus will also receive some new leadership and expertise from the bench in recent hire Bennie Seltzer.  Seltzer, one of the greatest players in Washington State history, is also one of the more esteemed assistants in basketball this century.  He got his start with Kelvin Sampson at Oklahoma, before following Tom Crean to Marquette and Indiana.

An ill-fated stop as head coach at Samford was followed by assistant gigs at Loyola-Chicago – helping build the Ramblers towards their Final Four run – and Washington State, before arriving at Evansville where he was ushered in as interim head coach for six games after Walter McCarty was placed on administrative leave.  After Evansville, Seltzer has now found himself back in the west – this time, on the sidelines at Idaho.

It is likely Idaho might not make any noise in the Big Sky immediately – they are coming off an eight-win season where they ranked 323rd in KenPom, after all – but the Big Sky has had five different teams win its conference championship in the past ten years.  The conference is as wide open as any other in the country, and the rebuilding Vandals are the perfect team to cease opportunity of that.

On top of all of this, as an added bonus, the Vandals are receiving a new venue in the form of the Idaho Central Credit Union Arena, a 4,200-seat venue opening in the fall of 2021.  If anything, the new arena will serve as a recruiting boon for the rebuilding Vandals heading into the future.

While this is a team that, more likely than not, will not make any national headlines, this is an up-and-coming Idaho squad that should be on people’s radars if they are on a team’s schedule.

In addition, for the Big Sky, this is a significant shifting year in leadership on the court.  18 of the top 30 scorers in the conference last season have graduated.  There is genuine potential for Idaho to add themselves to the list of unique conference champions in the past ten seasons.

And, even if they do not claim a Big Sky title, the Vandals are still a team looking to redeem themselves.  They will continue to be a threat to teams on their schedule, and Idaho has the necessary staff and manpower to pull off the redemption arc.