This weekend, both the men's and women's College of Idaho basketball teams are starting their conference play stretch. Each team sits at a 5-1 record through their first few weeks of play, but now that conference play is coming, both coaches feel like there is a fresh start.
“We’re 0-0 again," said men's coach Colby Blaine. "At the end of the day in conference, you want to win the regular season, it’s an automatic bid to the national tournament.”
The women's team has a challenge to start off their conference play as No. 20 Southern Oregon comes to Caldwell on Friday.
While the sole loss on the team's record came against Montana Western, they also dropped two exhibition games against Boise State and Utah State. women's coach Janis Beal says they learned a lot from those games against Division I opponents, and that it gave her team a feel for more athletic players.
Beal's team has also learned a lot from the five wins they've earned.
“We’ve learned how to win close games, that was something that kind of plagued us last year a little bit," Beal said. "So, I think being able to win in a close game, was big for us to learn that early.”
As for the Men's team, the one game they dropped was their season opener at Arizona Christian, which is the No. 1 team in the country.
Since then though, they have picked up five wins for their record and even won their annual exhibition game against Division II opponent Northwest Nazarene University. The Mayor's Cup resides in Caldwell until NNU comes to Caldwell to try to get it back next Tuesday.
Blaine credits his team's success to their depth.
“We bring our leading scorer and our leading rebounder off the bench," Blaine said. "I think that’s a testament to the type of team that we are is that everybody matters here, right, it’s not just one or two guys. Johnny certainly plays a big part, but he’s playing his role really well off the bench for us.”
