MOSCOW, Idaho - If it wasn't clear before the University of Idaho men's basketball team played UC Irvine Saturday, it was certainly clear afterwards. The Vandals wanted a win - badly.

For themselves and for their coach, the Vandals played a gritty and relentless ballgame. They earned a 57-52 victory on the Cowan Spectrum floor in front of 2,037.

It was an oversized win for the undersized Vandals, who broke a string of seven consecutive losses to UC Irvine and ascended into a tie for sixth in the Big West.

Thankfully, many of the troubling trends that had recently bothered Idaho were missing Saturday as the Vandals out-hustled Irvine for almost all of the game.

Gone was the sluggish start which had sometimes doomed the Vandals on their home floor. They led 19-7 after 12 minutes and 26-19 at halftime despite shooting only .270.

Nearly gone were the debilitating turnovers - the Vandals committed only five for the game, a season low - and the offensive lapses in the late game.

"We executed in the heat of the game," coach Leonard Perry said. "For the most part offensively, when we had to have one, we went out and got it."

With 3:58 remaining, Dwayne Williams hit a transition 3-pointer to stretch the Idaho lead to four points.

The Vandals kept the Anteaters at arm's length for the rest of the game thanks to good free throw shooting and rebounding.

A team-high 20 points and eight rebounds from Tyrone Hayes didn't hurt, either. Hayes, who had been haunted by foul trouble in recent home games, sufficiently haunted the Anteaters (9-9, 4-5) on both ends of the floor.

The Vandals (6-12, 3-6) overcame an obvious height disadvantage in the second half by disrupting the Anteaters' passes into the low post.

"(Playing against a smaller team) is frustrating, to a point," center Adam Parada said. "But it also has its advantages."

Parada enjoyed 26 points and 11 rebounds in advantages over the Vandals. The Vandals' success against him was strictly relative - it seemed they only stopped (or limited) him when the Anteaters needed a big score.

For stretches during the first half, Parada seemed nearly unstoppable. He used his 7-foot frame and 20-foot shooting range to score 14 of Irvine's 19 first half points.

Rashaad Powell, the 6-4 forward who makes his defensive impact by outworking his opponents for position, had moderate success in the second.

"For our guys to bounce back after a tough loss to Long Beach like that, to beat a team we've never beat, tells me we had the character I thought we had," Perry said.