With expanded student seating, the Vandals set basketball attendance records at the Kibbie Dome with 11,000 against Washington State on December 4,[1] and eight hundred more on February 12 against Montana for a conference record.[2] The former was an overtime victory, the third straight over the Cougars in the Battle of the Palouse,[1] on the same night that the resurgent Vandal football team narrowly lost a I-AA playoff game on the road, televised on cable by WTBS of Atlanta.[3] The latter with Montana was a deflating nineteen-point defeat to snap the 43-game home winning streak, begun over three years earlier in 1980.[2] Idaho won its final three home games, but attendance fell; the highest was 8,000 for the finale against Boise State, Monson's hundredth and final win at the helm.[4] Consecutive road losses the week prior at Idaho State and Weber State had eliminated any chance of another regular season title and the opportunity to host the conference tourney.[5]
The Vandals successfully defended their title in the Far West Classic at Portland in late December,[6] and had a 12–1 record in mid-January, and appeared capable of a third consecutive conference title. Four road defeats in conference and the home loss to Montana resulted in a tie for third place in the regular season with the Grizzlies, who swept their two-game series. With an opportunity to three-peat, the Vandals were the low seed in the four-team Big Sky tourney in Reno. They lost by five points to host Nevada-Reno in the semifinals, and neither was selected for the 52-team NCAA tournament; Weber State won the final and advanced.[7]
Idaho became the first Big Sky team to earn an invitation to the NIT,[8][9][10][11] but lost in the first round at Oregon State;[12] they led by three at the half at Gill Coliseum, but lost by eighteen.[13][14] the Beavers had also ended UI's season the previous year, in the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA tournament. In both seasons, Idaho defeated OSU in the Far West Classic in late December, but lost the rematch in March.[8]
Between semesters on December 20, the Vandals played a home game at Columbia High School in Richland, Washington, where senior guard Brian Kellerman had starred, and 4,100 packed the Art Dawald Gym for the homecoming. The popular Monson had coached at nearby Pasco High School for nine years (1967–76), and senior center Kelvin Smith was a PHS graduate.[15] Idaho made a lengthy trip to South Carolina in January for a nationally televised game on CBS.[16][17]
Aftermath
Several days after the NIT loss in Corvallis, Monson expectedly left his alma mater for the University of Oregon in Eugene;[18][19][20] he led the Ducks for nine seasons in the Pac-10, with three NIT appearances. Assistant coach Barry Collier applied for the Idaho vacancy, but athletic Bill Belknap hired Bill Trumbo, a junior college head coach from northern California;[21][22] the Vandals returned to the cellar of the conference in each of the next three seasons and attendance plummeted.[23][24] In March 1986, Trumbo was succeeded by Tim Floyd, an assistant under hall of fame head coach Don Haskins at Texas-El Paso.[25][26]
With Monson for all five seasons at Idaho, Collier joined him at Oregon for three more, then was at Stanford for three seasons under Mike Montgomery. He became a head coach at his alma mater Butler in 1989, led the Bulldogs for eleven years, then went to Nebraska for six seasons.
This ended the best four-year stretch in the history of the program; the freshmen that entered in the fall of 1979 (Brian Kellerman, Phil Hopson, and reserve Ben Ross)[27] and Monson led the Vandals to an overall record of 89–26 (.774) and three national postseason appearances. (In each of the previous five seasons of the late 1970s, Idaho had finished last in the Big Sky.) A four-year starter, Kellerman was first-team all-conference for three years (honorable mention as a freshman),[28][29] and was the Big Sky player of the year as a sophomore,[30] the second of three consecutive years in which that honor went to a Vandal guard. (From the Tri-Cities, Kellerman was the player of the year in Washington as high school senior in 1979, but was passed on by the Pac-10 schools.)
For the four seasons, Idaho had a home record of 51–2 (.962) with a 43-game winning streak. With only two home games, they went 10–5 overall against the four Northwest schools of the Pac-10, the strongest at the time was Oregon State; the Beavers won three of the five. Oregon dropped all three, the Cougars lost the last three, and Washington the last two. The Vandals also swept all four games from Gonzaga, (with hall of fame point guard John Stockton for the last three),[31][32][33] and won consecutive Far West Classics in Portland.[6]
All-conference
In addition to Kellerman, senior center Kelvin Smith was also named to the All-Big Sky team; he was honorable mention the previous season. Senior forward Phil Hopson was on the second team for a third consecutive year, and junior point guard Stan Arnold was honored as the conference's newcomer of the year.[28][29]
