Here's what ails ISU men's basketball — and how to cure it

Some of the reasons for the Bengals lack of success during the past quarter century might seem obvious: The Bengals play in a 1950s-era gymnasium, having abandoned Holt Arena, which was good enough to host NCAA Tournament games in 1970s, but had grown too cold, too expensive and too large for the shrinking crowds ISU was drawing. That 1993-94 championship team averaged over 4,500 fans a game at Holt Arena. ISU is now averaging 1,145 fans per game in Reed Gym.

Recruiting to Pocatello has never been easy because of its isolation and relatively small-town setting, and getting to Pocatello has gotten harder, not easier over time, as the single air carrier in the area has been cutting back flights.

Idaho State traditionally has one of the smaller athletic department budgets in the Big Sky Conference, and the Bengals are forced to spend most of their non-conference season on the road, playing money games against Power 5 teams as a result.

Looney has accepted all those challenges, plus a few curveballs he never expected: The COVID-19 pandemic, which essentially ended off campus recruiting for a significant period, and the arrival of the transfer portal and name, image and likeness payments to athletes.

His first three-and-a-half seasons at ISU have been a learning experience more than anything, as Looney has posted a 36-70 overall record, 22-34 in Big Sky play, all the while dealing with a serious health issue of his own that sidelined him for four games last season. Perhaps in recognition of ISU’s challenging history and circumstances, ISU athletic director Pauline Thiros negotiated a five-year extension of Looney’s contract last fall; it was formally announced earlier this month.

With more than three seasons under his belt as Bengal coach, Looney has had an opportunity to reflect on what works, what doesn’t and what he needs in order to be successful in Pocatello over the next five years. There are some obvious improvements he’d like, some new benefits he’s looking forward to employing — and an acknowledgement that he still doesn’t have all the answers.

“I feel fortunate and blessed in regards to receiving a contract extension,” Looney said during a recent interview. “Obviously, it gives us time to figure it out. I don’t know if I have a clear picture with regards to what needs to happen because my time here so far was disrupted by COVID and rule changes, and trying to navigate those things has been much different than at any other point in my career.”

Here is a summary of what Looney has learned about the factors that limit ISU men’s basketball, along with his thoughts about what can, or should be done to address them.

Facilities

Might as well acknowledge the elephant in the room up front. Reed Gym and its locker facilities are a tough sell to recruits, and to patrons who complain about parking, limited concessions and rest room facilities, and bench seating in the upper deck.

“I think there are multiple layers to it (the facilities issue),” Looney said. “No. 1, in regards to the locker room, in regards to having a gym, we have adequate space to practice. It’s not like our athletes or coaches are put in a compromising situation with regards to the space to get better. A space where our guys can hang out and get changed and turn in their laundry — we have all those things. But with it, maybe we don’t have all the bells and whistles, which a lot of the people we are recruiting against do have. We could say it in a hundred different ways, but that makes a difference.”

By bells and whistles, Looney is specifically referring to not only event venues, but locker rooms, meeting and film rooms and athletes lounges that are bright and shiny and full of photos and branded logos promoting the institution.

Both Looney and Thiros note that discussions about facilities have been going on at ISU for a long time — certainly as long as Looney has been on campus. Thiros noted there is a five-phase plan in place for major facilities at ISU, and the first two phases are the ongoing renovation of the seating space at Holt Arena. Phase one, the remodel of the North Side of Holt, was completed last year. Phase two, the south side remake, is ongoing, and that is expected to be complete this summer.

The next phase is an extension from the north side of the arena, which Thiros refers to as a “spine,” that would house meeting spaces, film rooms and congregation areas for students and athletes. After the spine is completed, a new basketball arena is next in line — perhaps in “five to ten years,” Thiros said.

To long-suffering Bengal fans who have been viewing architectural drawings of new basketball arenas for a couple of decades, that timeline may not generate a lot of enthusiasm. When I asked Gary Pitkin, an ISU alum who is retired and lives in Boise, if he would contribute if ISU announced a new arena campaign, he responded, “Oh, absolutely. In fact, that question was asked about two or three ADs ago. They asked, ‘How many of you would put $10,000 toward it?’ I raised my hand, and so did a lot of other people. I don’t understand why you can’t just start a campaign. If you don’t get out of the starting blocks, how are you going to finish the race?”

Thiros acknowledges the impatience, but said it’s important for ISU to move in a disciplined approach to reaching its facility goals, rather than jumping around from project to another. Looney concurs.

“A campaign sounds nice, but the campaign is going to need to be $50 million, if not more, to get it started,” the coach said.

There are also no guarantees that a new arena will solve all of ISU’s problems. Portland State completely remodeled its arena, creating Viking Pavilion, at a cost of $52 million, in time for the 2018-19 season. The remodel hasn’t had much impact as far as attendance or competitiveness are concerned. The 2017-18 PSU team, the last to play in the old facility, finished 20-14, 9-9 in league play, and averaged 607 fans over 13 home games. Here are the win-loss and attendance numbers for PSU teams since the Pavilion reopened

The University of Idaho, meanwhile, opened its sparkling new, 4,200-seat Idaho Central Credit Union Arena in the fall of 2021, at a cost of $51 million. Here are the Vandals’ numbers, beginning with the 2019-20 season, which was the program’s last season in its previous arena with fans (before the pandemic started).

Idaho is seeing a large relative increase in turnout in the new arena, but 1,600 fans per game still seems like a small number in return for a $51 million capital investment.

None of that is to say Looney wouldn’t love to be able to sell a new arena to recruits, or that ISU fans wouldn’t enjoy a modern, comfortable new facility.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” Looney said. “If our community truly wants our team to compete for a Big Sky Conference title, we’re going to need a venue to play in and to recruit to, like a lot of the programs around the country that are really succeeding now.”

Athlete stipends

Name, image and likeness (NIL) is all the rage at larger schools, whose deep-pocketed boosters are able to offer athletes large sums of money in return for endorsements, charitable activities or other athlete involvement. A few Bengals have small NIL deals, but ISU is hitching its star to another form of direct payment to athletes: Cost of attendance.

In 2015, the NCAA changed its rules to allow athletes to receive more than the cost of a traditional scholarship, which covered only tuition, room and board, fees and books. Now, universities can cover related expenses such as travel to and from the school, medical expenses and childcare needs. Each institution uses an NCAA-approved formula to determine what “cost of attendance” is for that institution, and then can grant athletes stipends up to the total amount determined by the formula.

Beginning next fall, ISU will offer cost of attendance stipends to football, volleyball, soccer and men’s and women’s basketball athletes.

“For head count sports (like basketball), it’s likely to be $3,000 per student,” Thiros said. “For equivalency sports (football and soccer), it will be a pot of dollars for coaches to distribute at their discretion.”

Looney is excited about the prospect of offering his recruits, beginning with next year’s class, some extra cash. “Cost of attendance has become a very big thing, maybe more so in men’s basketball than in any other sport out there,” Looney said. “If you are just simply offering a student athlete a full scholarship, that’s no longer just enough. Maybe it should be, but the truth is in our sport, it’s not. So our university, and us as a program with our fundraising dollars, we’re going to start to offer our students cost of attendance starting next year. I think that can make a significant impact with regards to what we can do with our roster moving forward. That’s a major, major step.”

Looney still encourages any boosters who are interested in lining up NIL deals with ISU athletes to pursue that. “Anything we can do to make the athlete’s experience better, it is obviously going to improve not just the player we can recruit here, but the retention of them throughout their career,” he said.

Geographic isolation

One thing Looney has had to come to terms with that he didn’t anticipate initially is how the relative geographic isolation of Pocatello impacts both recruiting and team travel. Getting anywhere from Pocatello has often required a three-hour bus trip to Salt Lake City to make a connecting flight to wherever the team is playing that weekend, followed by another three-hour trip back from SLC at the end of road trip. And it can result in an arduous trip that could turn off prospective recruits, as well.

“What I’ve learned during the time I’ve been here is that sometimes you can identify a player that you think can be a great player in your program,” Looney said. “A player that can impact your team. You work your butt off to recruit him all year long, and it gets to the point where you bring him on a visit, and the travel to get here, and the travel to get him back home might be the deciding factor with regards to him not coming. Not Pocatello itself, not what we have to offer and don’t offer on campus. Sometimes the mom and dad can think, ‘Man, that’s a long trip, like how would I ever get to a game?’ That’s a hurdle we have to get over as well.”

The long trips to away games also become a grind over the course of a season that begins in late October and doesn’t end until early March. To help alleviate the travel challenges, ISU has secured donations from a local car dealer and private donors that will cover the extra costs for the Bengals to fly out of either Pocatello or Idaho Falls, rather than busing to Salt Lake City.

The Bengals are focusing their non-conference scheduling on schools where they can fly directly from Idaho Falls or Salt Lake City. ISU is looking to recruit in areas where the athletes and their families can get to Pocatello with a minimum of flight changes.

Finally, Pocatello’s isolation is a factor in not only recruiting, but keeping players, Looney said. His last two coaching stops were in San Diego and Seattle, places where there were no shortage of things for players to do in their off-time. Pocatello offers some challenges compared to those areas, to say the least.

“I started out at Eastern Oregon, which is even smaller than Pocatello and just as isolated, and in that time we were able to find a bunch of kids that had different interests,” Looney said. “They would go up in the hills and shoot each other with paintballs, and had just as much enjoyment in activities like that. I think we need to, at ISU, try to build some of those same things, or find kids that are interested in those same kinds of activities.”

Non-conference scheduling

Most seasons, the ISU men will spend much of their non-conference schedule on the road, either playing “buy” games against Power 5 opponents, or other D-I opponents that will return the trip at some point. Typically, ISU plays a couple of home games with non-Division I opponents, and a game or two with another mid-major. Never will you see a Power 5 team appear in Reed Gym, unlike a couple of decades ago when schools like Washington, Gonzaga, USC, Utah, BYU, and Utah State would play in Holt Arena.

Most other Big Sky schools are in the same boat — they have a difficult time attracting Division-I non-conference opponents, and many spend the majority of their pre-season on the road. And those few home non-conference affairs became inconsequential. One long-time Bengal fan, Cameron Hicks of Pocatello, compares the non-conference environment at Reed Gym to a morgue. Looney concurs.

“In the first half of the season, the cheerleaders and dance team don’t always show up — not in a consistent routine,” Looney said. “The band isn’t always there. Everyone just has the feeling like it doesn’t matter until conference play. That shouldn’t necessarily be the feeling. A men’s or women’s basketball game should be a gathering point for the entire community. Everybody should want to be there and be a part of it.”

The Big Sky Conference is trying to address the non-conference scheduling issue. The conference released a strategic plan for basketball last year that calls for every conference school to play at least three Division-I non-conference home games every year. That’s going to cost money and require commitments on the part of the institutions, but it may result in more conference schools building some kind of connection with their fan bases before league play begins.

The conference is reportedly attempting to negotiate scheduling agreements with other so-called “mid-major conferences,” which would result in home-and-home pre-season matchups. Big Sky schools will also likely be required to pay guarantees in order to get other D-1 non-conference opponents to visit. The cost, at least as far as Looney is concerned, will be worth if it makes fans more connected and engaged.

“If you’re never playing at home against an opponent that people are intrigued to see until January, how do you build a fan base?” he asked.

Next in this series: A player, a former player, and student leaders on how they view ISU basketball and what it will take to make it successful.