BOISE, Idaho – The biggest hiccup the Idaho Vandals faced in their Big Sky semifinal win Tuesday might have come in the pregame.
When the Vandals’ 6-foot-5 Brazilian post Lorena Barbosa hopped off the bench to be announced as part of the starting lineup, the in-arena announcer instead read the name of Debora dos Santos.
And when tip-off took place a few minutes later, it was indeed dos Santos in the center circle for the Vandals, and Barbosa on the bench.
“One of my assistant coaches might get fired,” Moreira joked. “I’m kidding. I don’t know what happened. There was something at the (scorer’s) table, I don’t know. I mean, Deb deserves to be starting anyway, she’s one of the best players in the conference. But it was definitely a mix-up somewhere between one of my assistants and the table.”
Moreira could laugh after dos Santos’ double-double of 14 points and 12 rebounds – and a defensive effort that held Sacramento State without a field goal for the first eight-and-a-half minutes of the fourth quarter – led the top-seeded Vandals to a 59-51 win over the Hornets in which they led for nearly 35 of the 40 minutes.
In Moreira’s second season, the victory put Idaho into the Big Sky title game for the first time since 2021. The Vandals haven’t won the conference tournament since 2016 under Jon Newlee.
It also helped set up a much-anticipated title-game matchup against No. 2 Montana State, which will tip off at 3 p.m. Wednesday.
Taking the court 30 minutes after the Vandals wrapped up their win, Tricia Binford and the Bobcats didn’t have anything like the mostly stress-free afternoon Moreira enjoyed.
Despite leading Eastern Washington by as many as 19 points in the first half, MSU went ice-cold in the second, letting the Eagles – led by 23 points from freshman Elyn Bowers – come back to take the lead.
Desperately playing the free-throw game, the Bobcats got the miracle they were looking for when freshman Brianne Bailey swished a contested 25-foot heave from the left wing with under seven seconds to go.
“I swung her the ball and yelled, ‘Shoot it!’” MSU sophomore Addison Harris said. “I’m watching this happen in slow motion because I’m like, oh shoot, we’re in trouble here. I watch it go up, like, touch the ceiling, and I’m pretty sure I saw God reach down and touch the ball, because it touched heaven, and go straight through the hoop. Perfect swish. Never seen anything better.”
In overtime, despite Montana State making just a single field goal, a critical missed free throw by Bowers gave the Bobcats just enough room for a 79-77 win in the game of the tournament so far.
“You’d like to say momentum’s going with you when you hit that kind of a shot,” Binford said. “We knew that prior to (overtime), you’re trying to settle your kids, right? Because it’s one of those things, you can see that there’s a feeling of getting tight and tense, you know, this could be our last game in Boise, and you have to go play to win it, not be afraid to lose it. I think that reset, they finished it and played to win it.”
Binford and the Bobcats will now get a fascinating rubber match against Idaho.
In her 22nd year at Montana State, the former Boise State star has matured into the alpha dog coach in the conference. After winning her first regular-season title in 2015-16, she’s taken the Bobcats to the NCAA Tournament in 2017, 2022 and 2025. MSU has gone over .500 each of the last 19 years under Binford and have 25 wins this season, the fourth time they’ve had that many under her guidance.
Moreira, meanwhile, has wasted no time putting the Vandals back at the top of the Big Sky. The smiling, laid-back Brazilian was a well-known assistant coach around the West for over a decade before taking over in Moscow. In his second season, he’s recruited and schemed the Vandals into 28 wins, tied for the program record set in 1984-85. Idaho enters Wednesday’s championship game on a 17-game winning streak.
In the first matchup between the two this season, MSU’s pressure defense shocked, discombobulated and eventually unraveled the Vandals, who committed 25 turnovers in a 99-66 loss in Bozeman. That marked UI’s only Big Sky loss this season and the last time the Vandals lost, period.
“Yeah, they’re just a really hard team to play if you’ve never played them before,” Moreira said. “We can try to simulate as much as we can in practice, but their pressure, how active they are in gaps, their athleticism. … That first game was the reality check for these girls. I mean, that’s what Montana State is like.”
In the rematch in Moscow, it was Moreira’s adjustment – putting his centers on non-shooting MSU guard Jamison Philip and leaving them in the paint – that set the tone of the game and helped the Vandals pull out a 73-70 overtime win.
With the two teams splitting their season series, it was Montana State’s loss to Idaho State in late January that decided the regular season conference title, as well as the No. 1 and 2 seeds for the tournament.
That won’t matter much in a neutral-site championship game. Instead, Wednesday’s game will be decided by Montana State’s relentless pressure against Idaho’s high-paced offense.
At its best, MSU’s full-court press, fronted by Big Sky MVP Taylee Chirrick, is so overwhelming that it wins games more or less regardless of how well the Bobcats operate their somewhat limited halfcourt offense.
Idaho will have to combat that by limiting turnovers, running on offense and forcing Montana State to execute in the halfcourt.
Whoever controls that equation better will likely win an intriguing matchup between the old and new blood coaches in the Big Sky.
“Trish does a fantastic job,” Moreira said. “She kind of built a powerhouse there. When I was in the WCC with Deb (at San Francisco), we were chasing Gonzaga, and then I moved to here, and we’re chasing Montana State. Luckily, we’ve been able to catch up a little sooner than we did at San Francisco, but they’re good.”
