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Vandal Shots Week 8: Moscow Sports And Gargoyles

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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This post starts with a wonderful food hangover. I could sit here the rest of the night and watch the Mythbusters marathon that’s on, but… I must head to Best Buy in the wee small hours of the morning to see if I can get my hands on an Xbox 360 + 6 games and maybe FIFA and NHL ’10.

Saturday marked a big day for games in Moscow. Football played Utah State who had a less than stellar season going 3-8 going into Saturday’s game. For the most part though, they haven’t done to badly in their losses, losing to Utah by 18, Texas A&M by 8, BYU by 18, and Fresno by 4. But just the same they’ve lost to the likes of Hawaii and New Mexico State who are both also struggling. And their 0-6 record on the road doesn’t help their case much either.

Unfortunately for us, a comeback just wasn’t in the works for the game against USU after being down 31-7 midway through the second quarter and we lost 52-49 with 1,069 yards of total offense by both teams. It was pretty even across the board with the only big disparity being Idaho having almost 10 more minutes of possession and 10 more first downs. I feel if our starting QB, Nathan Enderle didn’t go out with a shoulder injury, he would’ve added to his 262 yards and three touchdowns.

Idaho Vandals MCLA Week 8-1
Yea, they don’t mess around up here in the ‘Scow.
Mainly because we’ve been having a lot of this lately…
Mainly because we’ve been having a lot of this lately…

In basketball news, we are 3-1 now after our home opener vs Sacramento State. With a very impressive performance by Idaho’s bench, they were able to take a 75-61 victory, extending their lead to as many as 14 points several times in the last 10 minutes.

Idaho Vandals MCLA Week 8-3
Luiz Toledo drives to the hoop. Courtesy: Idaho Athletic Media Relations

The second part of Saturday was our basketball team hosting Eastern Washington in one of the last games of the season in the Memorial Gym. It’ll be a good game, but I think even cooler since it is in the old gym. The Memorial Gym is what they use until football season is over when they can roll up the turf and use Cowan Spectrum. While Cowan Spectrum isn’t too spectacular and is just like most other basketball arenas, the Memorial Gym has a great old school feel too it with its quirky gargoyles perching along the ledges around the building and old wooden bleachers with an upper level gallery-style seating that makes you feel like you are kind of in the Coliseum.

Where football struggled to comeback and keep its lead, basketball was completely the opposite. The Vandals jumped out to an early 18-9 lead and never looked back, dominating the Eagles all night to a tune of 76-54. Idaho shot 54% from the floor and hit eight of twelve three-pointers, while holding Eastern Washington to just 36% from the floor and 44% from three-point land. With this win the Vandals are now off to a strong 4-1 start. Hopefully we can keep up this streak and take it over to Pullman when we play Wazzu on the 9th of December.

Idaho Vandals MCLA Week 8-4
View from the outside of the Memorial Gym
Close-up of one of the gargoyles lining the ledges
Close-up of one of the gargoyles lining the ledges
Idaho Vandals MCLA Week 8-6
Best picture I could find of the Memorial Gym layout.