Kellerman, Owens, Smith, Herbert and Hopson. Those five players comprised arguably the best starting lineup in Big Sky Conference men’s basketball history.
Brian Kellerman, Kenny Owens, Kelvin Smith, Gordie Herbert and Phil Hopson took the Idaho men’s basketball program to national prominence during the 1981-82 season. The Vandals opened with 16 consecutive wins, earned a top-10 national ranking, a feature story in Sports Illustrated, a trip to the NCAA’s Sweet 16, and an overall record of 27-3.
The team and its accolades rank ninth on the Big Sky Conference’s list of “50 Greatest Men’s Moments.’’
“The further you get away from something, the more you appreciate it,’’ said Kellerman, who was a 6-foot-5 junior guard from Richland, Wash., and the reigning Big Sky MVP that season. “It seems a little odd now to look back, and see how high we were ranked. It seems out of place sometimes.’’
The architect was Idaho alum Don Monson, who cut his coaching teeth at the high school level in Cheney and Pascoe, Wash., before spending three seasons as an assistant coach for Jud Heathcote at Michigan State.
Monson, the father of current Long Beach State head coach Dan Monson, arrived in Moscow with the basketball program in disarray. Idaho went 4-22 overall, 1-13 in Big Sky play in 1977-78, and was under an NCAA investigation for recruiting violations.
Monson focused on recruiting players from the Pacific Northwest. Hopson, a 6-foot-6 forward, was from Portland, Ore. Herbert, another 6-foot-6 forward, was from British Columbia. He played junior college ball at North Idaho College. Smith, a 6-foot-6 forward with an impressive wingspan, was from Pasco, Wash., and had attended junior college in California. Owens, the Big Sky MVP in 1981-82, was from New York, but had played JC ball at Treasure Valley Community College in Oregon.
“These kids were not really highly recruited,’’ recalled Monson, who lives in Spokane, Wash. “My idea was to recruit local, or area kids because I knew the response we’d get in Moscow. In any program, the alumni like to see as many local kids as they can. It may not always be the best idea.’’
It turned out to be a great idea. In Monson’s third season at Idaho, the Vandals won the Big Sky Championship and went 25-3 in the regular season. The Vandals advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history, drawing a No. 7 seed and a game against Pittsburgh in El Paso, Texas.
Kellerman battled the flu that night in El Paso. Monson drew up a play where Kellerman was supposed to take the potential-game winning shot. He was double teamed, however, and gave the ball up. Idaho missed the shot, and the game went to overtime. Pittsburgh’s Dwayne Wallace drained a 15-footer with three seconds remaining in OT as the Panthers pulled down a 70-69 win.
“A damn football player beat us,’’ Monson said. “Or we would have gone further in the NCAA that year.’’
Monson warned fans not to expect another season like that in 1981-82. It wasn’t. It was better.
The Vandals beat the likes of Washington and Washington State on the road en route to a 16-0 start. The streak was highlighted by victories over Iowa State, Oregon State and Oregon over four days in late December at the Far West Classic in Portland. Idaho didn’t just win; it pounded the major-conference teams, beating the Cyclones by 20, a strong Oregon State team by 22 and Oregon by 19.
The nation started to take notice. Idaho broke into the national polls with a ranking of 13 by UPI and 18 by the AP. A sign on the outskirts of Moscow made note of the Vandals’ 4-0 record against Pac-10 teams. Fans and students packed the Kibbie Dome, with crowds in excess of 8,000.
“It was fun,’’ Monson said. “You absolutely could not wait for the next game. We had students outside waiting, maybe overnight, to get seats. The fans couldn’t get enough of those kids. They wanted to see them all the time. For me, also being an Idaho grad and playing at Idaho, it was fun, lots of fun.’’
After wins over Idaho State and Weber State pushed the Vandals to 15-0, Sports Illustrated’s Jack McCallum came to Moscow to write a two-page story.
“I don’t mean to overstate this,’’ Monson said in the article, “but I guess this is as big a thing athletically as has ever happened to the school.’’
The Vandals weren’t a group of stars, but a team with great chemistry. Their matchup zone paved the way for the unit to lead the league in scoring defense. Opponents netted 57.5 points per game, and shot a league-low 41.8 percent. Idaho shot a league-best 53.5 percent from the floor.
“The zone defense was the key,’’ Monson said. “We ran some fast breaks, not as much as some people do today. But we took advantage of anything we could get. We weren’t a high-scoring team, but we scored enough.’’
Hopson led the league with a field-goal percentage of .632, and was also the top rebounder. Owens averaged 15.5 points, 4.2 assists, and 1.86 steals per game. Kellerman averaged 12.3 points and 4.4 assists per game. Smith manned the middle, swatting away 2.03 shots per game.
“We didn’t have anyone who was super vocal,’’ Kellerman said. “Everyone just played. “We weren’t the fastest, or the biggest, or this and that. Everyone seemed to blend from the coach on down.”
Idaho’s two regular-season losses occurred within days of each other. The first was against the Montana Grizzlies in Missoula’s Dahlberg Arena. With the UM student section – “The Zoo” – rocking and more than 8,700 fans in attendance, UM’s Doug Selvig grabbed a miss by Marc Glass in the waning seconds and made a desperation two-handed underhand basket to give the Grizzlies a 53-51 win.
“The kid rebounded it, and really couldn’t do anything with it,’’ Monson recalled. “He had to underhand it. They went nuts. We had a big rivalry with Montana. They used to throw baked potatoes at us.’’
Less than 48 hours later, the Vandals were in South Bend, Ind., to face Digger Phelps and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Weather issues caused travel problems, and the Vandals didn’t arrive until the early-morning hours on game day. Idaho led by nearly 20 in the first half, but wound up losing 50-48 in front of more than 11,000 fans at the Joyce Center.
“That Notre Dame trip was something else,’’ Monson said. “We had them beat. We had them by 10 points at halftime, and by two with eight seconds to go. Hopson had a one-and-one, and it went halfway down and came out. A kid grabbed it and threw it to John Paxson. He hit a basket, it’s tied, and we get beat in overtime.’’
The Vandals rebounded to win its final eight Big Sky regular-season games to capture the league title with a 13-1 mark. Idaho hosted the Big Sky Championship at the Kibbie Dome, beating Weber State by two in the semifinals and Nevada by five in the championship game in front of 8,250. During the run, Idaho ascended to sixth in both major Top 25 polls, the highest ranking to date for a Big Sky team.
Idaho drew a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament, which consisted of just 48 teams back then. The Vandals received a first-round bye, and even better played its first tournament game in Pullman, Wash., just a few miles from Moscow. Lute Olson’s Iowa Hawkeyes, the No. 6 seed, beat Louisiana-Monroe in the first round, setting up a clash between Iowa and Idaho in the second round.
“Before the game, my wife and I went out on the court, and we both said we couldn’t believe how well Iowa traveled,’’ Monson said. “We got out in the middle, and figured it out. Both teams had the same colors. It wasn’t Iowa traveling. It was Idaho.’’
A crowd of 12,340 fans packed Washington State’s Beasley Coliseum to watch a tight affair that went down to the final seconds. With the score tied 67-67, Monson called a timeout. He told the team to run the exact play it had tried a year earlier in the loss to Pitt in the NCAA Tournament.
“It was the same scenario,’’ Kellerman recalled. “But just before we went out on the court, coach grabbed my jersey and yanked me back. He said, ‘make sure you shoot the ball this time.’ ”
Kellerman attempted a 15-foot jumper. It hit the rim, and bounced up, hit the rim again, and a third time, before falling through the net. Idaho won 69-67 to advance to the Sweet 16. No Big Sky team has advanced that far in the tournament since.
“I got a decent look,’’ said Kellerman, whose daughter Cora was a standout volleyball player in the Big Sky for Eastern Washington. “It bounced, and hit, and bounced and hit. I don’t know what that was.”
A confident Vandal bunch headed to Provo, Utah, to face No. 2 seed Oregon State in the Sweet 16. Idaho had drilled the Beavers 71-49 in the Far West Classic in Portland on a neutral court back in late December. On this night, though, legendary coach Ralph Miller and Oregon State changed tactics. The Beavers got ahead and took the air out of the ball. No shot clock existed, so the Beavers used a four-corner offense to slow the pace of the game.
“That was one of the few times I played a team and actually talked to them on the court,’’ Kellerman said. “It was like, ‘come on, let’s play.’ The irony of that is they had guys like Lester Connor, and A.C. Green, an NBA team out there. It’s slightly amusing now that they felt they had to let the air out of the ball to beat us. It would have been nice in that kind of game to play a team we hadn’t played before. That was far from the most fun game we played in.’’
Oregon State won handily 60-42, and lost to Georgetown and Patrick Ewing in the Elite Eight.
Idaho finished the magical season 27-3 and ranked eighth in both major top 25 polls. Monson was named the national Coach of the Year by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. He stayed with the Vandals for one more season before heading to Oregon, where he was the Ducks head coach from 1983-92.
Kellerman, Hopson and Smith returned the following season, but injuries plagued the team. Idaho finished 9-5 in conference play, and 20-9 overall. Idaho lost at Oregon State in the National Invitational Tournament.
The Vandals won back-to-back Big Sky Championships and made NCAA Tournament appearances in 1989 and 1990 under Kermit Davis, but haven’t returned to the “Big Dance,’’ since. Idaho left the Big Sky following the 1995-96 season, but will come home to the conference next season.
Owens, Kellerman and Hopson were all NBA draft picks. Owens and Kellerman were both selected to the Big Sky’s 25th Anniversary Men’s Basketball Team.
“It’s hard to whittle it all down to one game or one season,’’ Kellerman said. “What stands out is the whole experience. This wasn’t a case of going to Duke and having a good year, or UCLA and having a good year. It was something completely different. If you ask anybody if they thought that had a chance of happening, they would say there was a zero percent chance of that happening.”
