RENO, Nev. - Jeff Ledbetter scored a team season-high 25 points, Idaho connected on 10 three-pointers and the Vandal men's basketball team netted an important road victory over Western Athletic Conference opponent Nevada on Thursday, 67-59.
Idaho (16-11, 8-6 WAC) shot a team and WAC season-high 66.7 percent from 3-point range and held Nevada (11-16, 7-6 WAC) to 36.7 overall shooting in the win that puts Idaho into a third-place tie in the conference standings with just two WAC games left to play.
The name of the game was shooting - both from long-range and from the foul line. Idaho hit 10 of its 15 attempts from beyond the arc, led by Ledbetter's five-of-six performance, and then hit 17 of its 20 free throw attempts to hold off a late Wolf Pack charge.
"There was a lot riding on this game," Idaho head coach Don Verlin said. "We've got a few guys nicked up right now and we had a few guys playing hurt tonight, but I thought our guys did a great job of playing as a team and did everything they could to get a win."
Idaho shot 45.5 percent overall from the field, including a crisp 57.9 percentage in the decisive second half. Nevada went 11-of-30 (.367) in each half and hit just 50 percent of its free throw attempts (7-14).
"Our coaches did a great job with this game plan, I thought our guys executed the game plan and I think we played this game at our pace all night long," Verlin said.
The win gives Idaho its first sweep of the Wolf Pack since 1999 and just its fourth season sweep of Nevada in series history.
"I thought our guys played extremely hard tonight," Verlin said. "I thought they were extremely tough. We did just about everything we needed to do, except we didn't rebound our ball well enough."
Ledbetter's 25 points are the most by a Vandal since Steffan Johnson's 28 against Hawai'i in the 2010 Senior Day game at the Cowan Spectrum. Fellow senior Shawn Henderson and junior Deremy Geiger added 10 points apiece for Idaho. Both Henderson and Geiger nailed a pair of 3-pointers in the game, and Geiger got all of his points in the second half.
Deonte Burton led Nevada with 19 points and four assists, while Dario Hunt pulled down a game-high 19 rebounds, with six points and two blocks, but only three Nevada players tallied more than six points and seven Wolf Pack players finished with two or fewer points.
The teams battled to a 29-29 tie at the break after a back-and-forth first half. Ledbetter scored 12 of Idaho's first 14 points in the game as the Vandals jumped out to a 14-7 lead at the 13:18 mark of the first period.
Freshman Stephen Madison's second-chance 3-pointer at the 11:16 mark of the first gave Idaho its largest lead of the half at 17-9, but Nevada outscored the Vandals 9-2 over the next five minutes to cut within one at 19-18.
The see-saw went the other way immediately, as the Vandals scored five in row over the next 30 seconds to jump back up 24-18 at 6:04. Nevada outscored Idaho, 11-5, over the remainder of the half to earn the tie at the break.
Things don't get any easier for the Vandals, as they'll travel to Logan, Utah, to take on Utah State (RV/No. 23) on Saturday. The Aggies have clinched the outright WAC regular-season title, and their lone conference blemish came at the hands of Idaho on Feb. 9, 64-56, at the Cowan Spectrum.
