BOISE — Last year, the Idaho men’s basketball team was three points away from dealing an upset to Montana State in the first round of the Big Sky tournament before a turnover at midcourt dashed their last-second hopes of causing chaos in the bracket.

This year, the 10th-seeded Vandals are hoping to fulfill the role of March Madness upset-maker as heavy underdogs once again.

UI (8-23) opens tournament play against seventh-seeded Southern Utah (16-15) at 11 a.m. PDT Wednesday at CenturyLink Arena in Boise.

“We’re basketball coaches and players — we live for the middle of March,” Idaho coach Zac Claus said after his team’s win over Idaho State on Saturday in their regular-season finale. “This is the fun stuff.”

Claus, who was named head coach last month after serving most of the season on an interim basis, has his team headed to the postseason coming off a win. The Vandals beat in-state rival Idaho State 80-76 on senior day.

It was a nice consolation during a season that has featured more lows than highs for rebuilding UI.

Idaho recorded a 4-16 Big Sky record and finished in the bottom two of the conference for the second straight season.

But Idaho is as good an example as any of the unpredictable nature of postseason basketball. In 2018, the then-22-win Vandals were upset by SUU 92-78 in their first tournament game and eliminated.

UI star Trevon Allen and Claus, then an assistant coach under Don Verlin, were a part of that senior-laden Vandal squad that saw their season end on an upset.

“You go down there and it doesn’t matter if you’ve won 25 games, it doesn’t matter if you’ve won three,” Claus said. “Everybody’s even, you go out and play for 40 minutes and if you come out on top, you get to keep playing.”

Allen’s play will likely be a key in determining whether UI goes on or goes home on Day 1. The senior guard is second in the Big Sky with 21.1 points per game and has the ability to score from anywhere on the floor.

Idaho’s downfall has been a lack of other scoring options. No other Vandal averages double digits and UI ranks 10th in the conference in scoring offense at 65.1 points per contest.

Southern Utah, meanwhile, had five players score in double figures in a Saturday overtime win over Montana.

The Thunderbirds’ balanced attack is spearheaded by senior guard/forward Cameron Oluyitan — an 85-percent free-throw shooter who averages 13.4 points per game.

The T-birds got the better of Idaho in their two meetings this season, winning 73-45 in Moscow and 87-55 in Cedar City, Utah.

Stephan Wiebe can be reached at swiebe@dnews.com, by phone at 208-883-4624 and on Twitter at @StephanSports.