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Vandal Shots Week 9: Headed To The H-Bowl!

Editor’s note: Krieg Shaw takes us behind the scenes of University of Idaho men’s lacrosse throughout the 2009-2010 season. The Idaho Vandals are an MCLA D1 team, competing in the Pacific Northwest Conference. Shaw, a senior midfielder, will be contributing photos on a weekly basis all season long. You can check out all of his posts here.
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Things are starting to get a little festive up here in Idaho and for all the right reasons. Football got a nice bowl selection for the H-Bowl, Men’s basketball had a huge victory and Christmas break is just oh-so close.

MCLA Idaho Vandals Week 9-1
Lights up in our Commons area

Finals are looming in the near future, luckily for me, all but one of my teachers have decided to either move or cancel their final, so next week will bring just one final, History of the Middle East, on Wednesday. Then I can head to Boise for a nice, long Christmas break. Outside of finals though, I’ve been spending some time with our fundraising chair to send out some 300 letters.

Friday night fun
Friday night fun

Luckily before the lockdown started, we were able to play some more indoor lacrosse, had enough guys for 5v5 with at least 4 subs for either side, needless to say coaches were a bit impressed with the showing. The indoor lax has been a huge hit and will hopefully pay off come springtime.

Vandal basketball upset the #25 Portland Pilots tonight to the tune of 68-48, from the start of the game our defense was on fire and held the Pilots to just 32% shooting from the field, while going 52% themselves and hitting 60% of three’s. This moves us to 5-2 on the season and now the Vandals have to prepare for their game this week in Pullman against WSU (6-2)

MCLA Idaho Vandals Week 9-3
I didn’t make it to the game due to some Spanish homework but managed to find a pic from someone who did.

Video for Postgame interview with Coach Don Verlin:

As disappointing as some of our losses were this year in football, we ended the year with a solid 7-5 record and were able to gain a bid to the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl. For us this is huge. After the seasons that Idaho has had in the past it has to be nice for the team to see their hard work come together and get this opportunity. We will play Bowling Green in the Bowl game on December 30th. Now it’s time to get some tickets.

MCLA Idaho Vandals Week 9-4
The prestigious truck stop bowl.

As crappy as this blue turf looks both in person and in HD, it’s gonna be nice to see some black and vandal gold on it come the 30th.
As crappy as this blue turf looks both in person and in HD, it’s gonna be nice to see some black and vandal gold on it come the 30th.

On a side note, last night my roommates and I were making our own bowl predictions and wondered how crappy of a bowl USC would get after their second-rate performance this season. All we could think was that the Trojans would end up in the H-Bowl with us and take out all their anger on Idaho.

USC + Smurf turf = Bad bad news for the Vandals.
USC + Smurf turf = Bad bad news for the Vandals.

What’s worse than playing USC in your first bowl game since 1998? Playing it on your rival’s home turf. So thankful we got Bowling Green instead.

In more lacrosse news, we have most of our schedule put together. Here are a couple of the key games we’ll be playing this spring.

February 27th @ Oregon State (6-6 last year)

March 17th @ San Diego State University (9-5 last year, finished #21 in the polls)

March 19th @ University of San Diego (8-8 last year)

April 3rd @ Washington (9-4 last year, finished #20 on laxpower.com)

April 17th vs. Boise State (This is our Mom’s weekend, this game will be huge)

Made this last year, I still feel that we should’ve beaten OSU then, not pleased with bad games:

MCLA Idaho Vandals Week 9-7

With that, I will use this opportunity for a shout out. Go Pack Go!

Green and gold runs in my blood.
Green and gold runs in my blood.

Alrighty, that’s it for me for a couple weeks. Gotta go enjoy Christmas break before we get back into the swing of things in Moscow. You know how it is. That said, I’ll be helping the LAS founders with a couple of things while I’m home for Xmas. One thing you can expect: an interview with our head coach Mike Band. He founded the Idaho program a few years back and he continues to build it up into something we are all very proud of. Happy Holidays!