Vandal Feature: Don Monson's Unmatched Legacy

DON MONSON'S UNMATCHED LEGACY

by Bernie Wilson

In the summer of 2023, nine players and two coaches from the greatest era in Idaho Vandals basketball history gathered for a reunion on campus. 

The center of attention, of course, was Don Monson, the legendary coach who had orchestrated the turnaround from lackluster teams to the school’s first appearance in the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Tournament as well as a Top 10 national ranking.

At one point the group gathered in the lobby of the Don Monson Coaching Offices in the ICCU Arena, where the hoops teams moved from the neighboring Kibbie Dome starting with the 2021-22 season.

“He loved it,” former forward Pete Prigge recalled. “We went in there and sat in the entrance where there are a couple of lounge chairs. He sat there and I think (Brian) Kellerman was in the other chair, and we all gathered around behind them and took a couple of photos.”

The floor outside the offices includes the logo from the last wood court used at the Kibbie Dome, and the home locker rooms are decorated with the baseline and keys decorate the ceiling. 

“We were sitting at some of the lockers. I think Monson was trying to give us a last pep talk, but I don’t know how well it went over,” Prigge said with a laugh. 

They also celebrated Monson’s 90th birthday and had dinner in the Bud and June Ford Club Room in the Kibbie Dome, where the Vandals once won 43 straight basketball games under the storied coach.

“It was nice because a lot of guys hadn’t been back there for 40 years,” Kellerman said. “I’m  glad that it happened that everybody reconnected. I don’t know if it was the last farewell, We celebrated his 90th birthday at the same time. It was special.”

Kellerman and Prigge will be among the players returning to ICCU Arena on Saturday to help honor the late coach on Don Monson Legacy Night. The Vandals open Big Sky Conference play against Eastern Washington, which is coached by Monson’s son, Dan. 

Dan Monson was coaching Long Beach State when the 49ers played the first game in ICCU Arena on Nov. 10, 2021. That night, with Don Monson and some of his former players in attendance, the Vandals raised banners commemorating Monson’s Idaho career and the Sweet 16 team. 

“To me, that was more emotional than (Saturday’s) going to be,” Dan Monson said. “My dad passing is personal. It’s not about the university or about a basketball game, but when we came there with Long Beach State to open the arena and the coaches offices, I thought one of the coolest things my mom did is a picture of him sitting in the coaches offices is one of the pictures she used for his funeral program.

Don Monson died in Spokane on Oct. 1 at age 92, leaving a legacy that has yet to be matched more than four decades later. 

Kellerman expects “mixed” emotions.

“I mean, in a lot of ways,” said Kellerman, who made the biggest shot in program history to deliver its biggest win. “One, because Coach has always been around and it’s a big void in that respect. Mixed in that Dan’s coaching Eastern and Idaho’s playing Eastern so there’s all kinds of mixed feelings there.”

Both teams will wear "Coach Monson" patches on their jerseys. The Vandals will wear the patches the rest of the season. Cheney High and Pasco High, where Monson began his coaching career from 1958-1976, will wear the emblem on their warmup shirts.

No one who was around Idaho hoops, whether they’re players or the fans who packed the Kibbie Dome, could ever forget Monson’s five-year run from 1978-83. 

Monson was best-known for his animated sideline demeanor that included contorted body language and anguished expressions. Players and officials alike were the target of his temper as he sometimes appeared to be pulling out what little hair he had left.  

On the court, his teams played a suffocating 2-3 matchup zone and thrilled the home crowds with a handful of alley-oop slam dunks every game. 

Monson, who played for the Vandals in the early 1950s after starring at Coeur d’Alene High, was hired in 1978 and inherited a team that had gone 4-22 the previous season. 

By his third season, 1980-81, the Vandals went 25-4, won their first Big Sky Conference Tournament title and reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time.

Then came the greatest season in school history. The 1981-82 Vandals went 27-3, won the Big Sky Tournament again, were ranked as high as No. 6 in the national polls, earned a first-round bye in the NCAA Tournament and then stunned Lute Olson’s Iowa Hawkeyes 69-67 in overtime at WSU’s Beasley Coliseum. 

Kellerman launched the winning jumper from about 17 feet. The ball bounced off the rim and then the back iron before falling through the net as time expired, while Phil Hopson avoided committing basket interference as he went up for a possible rebound.

Monson bounded across the court to hug his family. He was so excited that he kissed broadcaster Bob Curtis on the lips. If anyone doubts that, there’s a picture of the moment hanging in the Corner Club (Generations of Vandals who missed the Monson Era might have run into the legendary coach in the legendary watering hole when he was in town for basketball or football games).

“It was an exciting time for sure,” Kellerman said. “To be part of something that is looked back on for years and years and years and years and years, it’s nice, definitely.”

Idaho went on to lose 60-42 to Oregon State in the Sweet 16 in Provo, Utah. The Vandals had beaten the Beavers 71-49 two months earlier en route to the first of two straight Far West Classic titles. 

“Oh man, wow, what a crowd, what a game, too,” said Prigge, who was a sophomore that season. “I’ve watched it a couple of times over the years and it's always fun to relive it, especially when you come out on the winning end of it. What a great thing for the University of Idaho and the state of Idaho and especially up around the Moscow area, where a lot of people from around there, North Idaho, could go to Pullman for the game. Whatever it was 11,000 or 12,000 people there, pretty much an all-Idaho crowd. It was pretty awesome.”

Monson was named the Kodak Division I National Coach of the Year. He finished his five-year run with the Vandals with a 100-41 record.

As great as the 1981-82 team was, Prigge, who has lived in Cottonwood the last 25 years, gave a shoutout to the previous year’s team and some players who preceded Monson’s hiring.

“The seniors that were on that team, the two that come to mind, Jeff Brudie and Dan Forge, what those guys had gone through, I think they were 4-22, their freshman year and then 25-4 their senior year, and to win the first Big Sky Conference championship, people overlook that a lot because the Sweet 16 team got so much notoriety,” Prigge said. “But the winning culture that that 80-81 team set, the people on the 82 team kind of say, we dovetailed quite a bit off that 80-81 team.”
 

He also credited the legacy of multi-sport star Don Newman, who graduated in 1980. “The players used to call him a dog, ‘He was a real dog,’ in other words, a real fighter.”

Newman died of cancer in 2018. Sadly, Hopson died last summer in an accident in Phoenix.

Brudie recalled how things improved after Monson was hired. 

“Things changed. He came from Michigan State, so he just got a better shoe deal. Little things. The outfits we wore in practice were upgraded. He did get the shoe deal,” Brudie said. “He wanted to stay in nicer hotels, even though if you lost you couldn’t go back to the same hotel the next year. He was superstitious as heck. Eventually we kind of ran out of hotels in Bozeman.”

As for that shoe deal?

“We were in Pro-Keds when I was a freshman,” said Brudie, a graduate of UI’s College of Law and a retired district court judge who lives in Lewiston. “We at least got Converse. Pro-Keds to Converse was a big deal.”

The Vandals went from just four wins the season before Monson arrived to 11, 25 and 27 in the next three seasons. 

“It was a process and there was a plan, and that’s kind of the way you did it back then,” Brudie said. “It’s not the way you do it now. You got people there and kept them there and you got better.”

Brudie remembers the players having some fun at Monson’s expense. 

“Monson was so superstitious that on game days he’d be wandering around and if he found a penny, he’d always take it and put it in his shoe,” Brudie said. “Back then there was no East End (Addition) and we dressed up in a concession stand on the north side of the Dome. We’d be up there getting dressed and taped and stretching, and Monson would come in on the floor level of the Dome and do a couple of laps around the Dome by himself.

“So eventually we got the idea that we were going to salt the floor of the Dome with a few pennies in hopes he’d find one and feel good about himself, because he wasn’t the most positive, upbeat guy in the world, of course. So we’d be up on the concourse on the north side throwing pennies down onto the floor of the Dome while he walked around.”

Brudie said he never let on until he told the story at the 2023 reunion.

“He enjoyed it. I know his wife did,” Brudie said.

Kellerman said he didn’t mind Monson’s sideline demeanor.

“We were there for the primary reason to go out and win games, so we had a shared objective. I think for the most part everybody viewed it that way.”

The former guard said he and Monson stayed close over the years. 

“I just loved the way he competed, honestly,” Kellerman said. “And I think that was probably the key to our success because everyone was pretty much self-driven, which you kind of had to be a little bit, your own worst critic, because he was going to shoot straight regardless of what, when, who or how. But then on the flip side of that is a man with a big heart, for sure.”

As for Dan, he comes in as an opponent in the opening game of Big Sky play, he has to be a coach first, but he knows the importance of the University of Idaho to his father and the importance of his father to the Vandal family. 

“It’s always been pretty crystal clear that for me it’s the opening game of league, that’s what makes it way more important than it’s Idaho or that my dad coached there or that I went there,” Dan said. “We desperately need to start league play as a fresh season and a new start. The magnitude of that is way more important. However, to say there’s not more emotion involved in this game than any other is not true. I’m just honored that people would take the time to do some of the things that Idaho has done, naming the coaches' offices after him and putting his banner up.”

Bernie Wilson is a 1980 Idaho Idaho grad, a 40 year veteran of the Associated Press and a die-hard Vandal fan. He covered coach Monson and the Vandals for the Moscow Daily News.