MOSCOW ? The University of Idaho women's basketball team sent its four seniors out on a high note Saturday, as the Vandals took down San Jose State by a 77-66 score in the team's home finale at the Cowan Spectrum.
The Vandals move up to 3-24 overall and 2-12 in Western Athletic Conference play, while the Spartans slip to 2-26 and 1-14. Idaho is now 6-1 under head coach Mike Divilbiss on Senior Night games. Sara Dennehy, Lindsey Koppen, Katie Schlotthauer and Hannah Wells all made their final home appearance.
“I'm really happy for those kids,” Divilbiss said. “They've worked really hard and it would have been so easy for them to check it in a long time ago, but they didn't.”
After Thursday's loss to Hawai'i, Divilbiss said that the team needed to be more aggressive on offense. Saturday night, the Vandals got after San Jose State on both ends of the floor, pushing the ball up the floor for lay-ups, forcing turnovers and driving to the basket.
“When you're aggressive you shoot well and when you're tentative, you don't,” Divilbiss said. “We were really aggressive tonight.”
“It started on the defensive end, but offensively we were also aggressive and hopefully that will continue and we can win some more ballgames down the road here.”
It paid off in the first half, as Idaho shot 52.0 percent from the floor and scored a season-high 39 first-half points, then followed it with 38 more in the second half to finish with a season-high 77. The Vandals shot 45.5 percent from the field, their second-best shooting performance of the year.
Katie Madison owned the paint all night long and dropped a team season-high 28 points on eight-of-14 shooting, including 12-of-15 from the free throw line. She also pulled down eight boards, dished out three assists, gathered one steal and blocked one shot.
“It was awesome,” Madison said. “I wanted to do that for my seniors, because I'm really close to a lot of them. It was really fun.”
Rachele Kloke and Charlotte Otero also stepped up big for their seniors. Kloke had 13 points, the second-highest total of her career, on five-of-eight shooting, with two assists, a steal and a career-high two blocks. Otero tied a season-best with 10 points on three-of-four shooting, including two-for-two from beyond the arc.
It wasn't all fun and games for the Vandals in the second half, as Idaho saw an eight-point lead quickly evaporate into a one-point deficit over the first 90 seconds of the second on a SJSU 9-0 run. In previous games, the Vandals might have slipped up and let the opponent run away, but not tonight. Kloke buried a mid-range jumper at the 13:16 mark to key an 11-0 Idaho run that put the Vandals up for good.
Yinka Olorunnife, the WAC's top freshman rebounder, played true to her form and pulled down 13 boards, including nine on the defensive side. Therese Riedel, another Vandal freshman, had a solid performance and she pulled in six rebounds and scored two points.
With their home schedule now complete, the Vandals will head to Logan, Utah, next Saturday to go for the season-sweep against Utah State. Idaho beat the Aggies 70-64 in overtime on Jan. 19 at the Cowan Spectrum.
