THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Former Lake City and now Idaho guard Kolton Mitchell: 'March Madness, I’ll play through anything to be able to play in that'

They told Kolton Mitchell his season was over. 

Fortunately for the Idaho Vandals, he decided otherwise. 

Early in Idaho’s game at Portland State on Feb. 19, Mitchell took a knee to the ribs from a Vikings player. 

“It hurt real bad, but I didn’t come out,” Mitchell recalled.  

He played the rest of the game.  

They thought it was just a bruise, so Mitchell played two nights later, at Sacramento State. 

An X-ray later showed he had two broken ribs in his left side. 

“I also had a bruised lung, so I was coughing up blood for about two weeks,” Mitchell recalled. 

“I was told my season was going to be done,” he said. 

However ... 

“I really just put in a lot of effort; I just made up my mind I was going to play through this, even though it’s very painful, it’s for this team,” Mitchell said. “And I’m so glad I did, being able to win a conference championship, and now I’m playing in March. March Madness, I’ll play through anything to be able to play in that.” 

Mitchell sat out Idaho’s last three games of the regular season, then returned to help Idaho post four victories in five nights at the Big Sky tournament to help the Vandals return to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1990. 

"If everyone knew what he was dealing with physically right now,” third-year Idaho coach Alex Pribble said, “and is still able to go out and perform, you’d know just how tough a young man he is.” 

MITCHELL BEGAN his collegiate career at Idaho State, but his first season was cut short after 10 games due to an injury to his left ring finger which required surgery. 

He received a medical redshirt, and transferred to Idaho after the season. 

As a redshirt freshman for the Vandals in 2024-25, Mitchell averaged 11.1 points and 3.5 assists per game. 

This year, his assists are up a bit, to 3.9 per game. And so is his scoring, at 13.7 per game. 

"I love doing both,” Mitchell said of facilitating vs. scoring. “It’s the beauty of a point guard. I always liked being a facilitator more, but sometimes the team needs me to score, which I believe I can do at a high level. Being able to balance both of those can be tough, depending on who we’re playing and how the coverage is, and how they’re guarding me. It kinda goes game by game, if I need to be a facilitating point guard, or if I need to be more aggressive, hunting my shots.” 

That’s why he can score 17 points one night, four points the next, and be equally happy, especially if the Vandals win. 

“The good thing about Kolton is, you can talk to him about things like that, and he’s so coachable; all he wants to do is win,” Pribble said. “He was an elite scoring guard in high school, and he was an elite scoring guard for us last year. This year, we had a few more weapons — we could throw the ball inside, we could spread the ball around a little bit. We asked Kolton at times to take more of a distributor role, and he didn’t blink an eye.  

"He’s a great leader for our team because he just cares about making our team better. Really, really proud of him.” 

MITCHELL IS one of five Idaho players on the Vandal roster. 

One (Titus Yearout of Lapwai) is redshirting. 

Mitchell played against the others in high school. 

As a sophomore, he played against Jack Payne when Payne was a junior at Boise High. 

The next night, he played against Brody Rowbury in the state championship game when Rowbury was a senior at Meridian. 

Rowbury’s Warriors got the best of a young Lake City team that night in March 2021. 

Five years later, they were sitting next to each other at ICCU Arena in Moscow when the Vandals saw their name appear on an NCAA bracket for the first time in 36 years. 

“Obviously me and Kolton still talk about it to this day,” Rowbury said. “We’re the best of friends now. If you would have told me that back then I would have told you you were crazy, but we’re best friends now, and joke about it. It’s all good. I just remember he got in a little bit of foul trouble, and that helped us out a little bit.” 

On that night in 2021, the 6-foot-11 Rowbury physically dominated most of the T-Wolves. 

“I was much bigger then,” said Rowbury, who played three seasons at Southeastern Louisiana before transferring to Idaho for his final season. “I’ve slimmed down quite a bit. When I left to play post-high school in Wichita, Kansas, at Sunrise Christian, when I got there I was like 330. Now I’m down to 255, 260.”  

Mitchell recalled the morning of that state title game against Meridian, "we were scouting them ... how are we going to be able to guard this guy, how are we going to box him out? It’s a lot nicer when he’s on your team.” 

Two seasons later, when Mitchell was a senior, Lake City beat Owyhee at North Idaho College. Jackson Rasmussen was a sophomore for Owyhee that year. 

“What I remember is Kolton Mitchell setting the school scoring record on us (39 points, in an 80-60 Timberwolf win in December 2022). That’s what I remember.” 

Does that game still get brought up, some 3 and a half years later? 

"Absolutely,” Rasmussen said. “Every time anything about Owyhee is brought up he throws that in there.” 

A couple of Saturday nights ago, when Mitchell, Rasmussen, Payne (who played at Owyhee as a senior), Rowbury and the Vandals were tipping off in Boise in their first game of the Big Sky tournament, Lake City and Owyhee were tipping off some 20 miles away, in Nampa, in the state championship game. 

“I was bragging about Owyhee’s going to win the state championship again,” Rasmussen said. “And when we found out we were going to be playing each other it was like, oh man, it’s going to be an easy win for us. But obviously, his boys got it done, so, props to them.” 

After those battles in high school, who could have imagined Mitchell would someday be teammates with the other three? 

“Brody beat me in the state championship, so I was always salty about that,” Mitchell said. “And Rass was at Owyhee, which was known as our state rival when I was in high school. So it was kinda bad blood, but now it’s all love.” 

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 1205, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.