THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Idaho men’s basketball coach Pribble looks to keep the Vandal momentum going

Soon after Alex Pribble was named men’s basketball coach at Idaho in April, he was watching game film of a player he was recruiting from City College of San Francisco.

As he watched, a player on the other team — North Idaho College, which went on to beat CCSF 97-89 in overtime — caught his eye.

“I said, ‘Who is that kid?’, and it came back to me — OK, that’s Julius Mims,” Pribble said.

A little background …

“I’ve known about Juice for a while,” said Pribble, who was assistant head coach at Seattle U the past four seasons. “I remember him out of high school being an extremely talented, athletic player, obviously the state high jump champion in Montana. Physically very gifted young man, and I followed him during his time at NIC.”

So Pribble contacted NIC coach Corey Symons, whom he knew from his coaching stops in the Northwest — an assistant at Eastern Washington from 2013-15, and head coach at NCAA Division II Saint Martin’s in Lacey, Wash., from 2015-19.

“By that time, Julius had a number of schools involved, and luckily, a lot of those fell through, and we were still able to get in the (recruiting) game,” Pribble said. A campus visit followed, and … the Vandals announced his signing in early May.

“For us, we really look for versatility,” Pribble said. “Julius is one of those guys you can put him in a lot of different positions on the court, and he’s successful in a lot of different areas. If he’s guarded by a bigger, slower, player, we can put him on the perimeter and he can be very successful. If he’s guarded by a smaller player, we can put him inside and he can be successful around the rim. Very versatile.

“For a 6-9 athlete, he shot the 3 at over 40 percent in junior college, so he’s a very versatile player who can stretch the court in a lot of ways. Runs the floor like a gazelle, an athlete that plays above the rim. He’s going to be a lot of fun for the fans to watch for sure.”

PRIBBLE, 38, and his coaching staff had a lot of recruiting to do after he took the Vandal job.

After he met with all the players eligible to return this season (roughly eight of them), and they decided whether to stay or two go, he was down to three players on his roster.

“Truthfully for us, it’s kind of a blessing in disguise,” Pribble said last week, during a break at a Vandal fundraising event at the Hagadone Event Center. “We wanted to start fresh, we wanted a new energy. We wanted guys that are going to come in and create a new culture.”

That was the advice he received from Missouri coach Dennis Gates, who was an assistant at California when Pribble was a grad assistant there) — start fresh.

So he and his staff went out and signed 12 players — nine college transfers, and three high school seniors.

(Along with Mims, one of the three junior college kids Pribble signed was guard EJ Neal of City College of San Francisco, whose game film he was watching when he spotted Mims.)

“That was a way for us to get old,” Pribble said, noting that’s why he hit the transfer portal so heavily. “It’s hard to stay old. A lot of coaches want to stay old, and it’s difficult to do that with the transfer portal. Especially for mid-major programs like us.”

The current Idaho roster includes one senior, five juniors, four sophomores and five freshmen or redshirt freshmen.

“Both of the Division I transfers that we brought in (forward Tyler Linhardt, from Washington, and guard Trevon Blassingame from Fairleigh Dickinson) were freshman transfers, so we’re going to be able to keep them for three years, which for us is a great way to stay old.”

Pribble said his primary recruiting area is the Northwest, though he can tap into his ties in California as well.

As far as Idaho high school athletes …

“For us, we don’t want to have any kids in the state of Idaho who aren’t familiar with the University of Idaho,” Pribble said. “Any talented players that are coming up through the pipeline, they will have heard from us. They’re going to know who we are. …for the players that want to stay local, we’re going to always make sure that they consider the University of Idaho as one of their primary landing spots.”

Pribble inherited (and kept) one of those Idaho recruits in guard Titus Yearout, the former Lapwai High star who redshirted with the Vandals last season, when Zac Claus was head coach.

“He’s a really good example of what we’re going to be as a program,” Pribble said. “He’s a kid who’s going to get better and better, day by day, practice by practice, and by the time he’s an upperclassman, he’s really going to do some great things in our program. Hard worker, tremendous young man, great communicator, and he just makes the guys around him better.”

WHAT GIVES Pribble hope?

The Vandals are 33-116 over the past five seasons, including 10-22 last year — Idaho’s best record over that stretch. The magical Sweet 16 run under Don Monson was more than four decades ago. Idaho’s last NCAA Tournament appearance was in 1990.

Of the ICCU Arena, which opened two years ago, “we believe, at our level, there’s not a better arena in the country,” said Pribble, who coached in the curtain-partitioned Cowan Spectrum at the Kibbie Dome when he was an assistant at EWU.

“There’s great momentum in our athletic department right now,” Pribble said. “It starts with the direction of our athletic director (Terry Gawlik); she’s brought in some fresh blood, some new energy. (Football) coach Jason Eck has created a blueprint of success; with me and our new women’s basketball coach, coach (Carrie) Eighmey, we feel like our job is to keep that flag running up the hill that coach Eck’s been carrying up to this point.

“We feel really good about the direction of the athletic department as a whole,” Pribble said. “And a rising tide raises all boats.”

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.