EPHRAIM—The Snow Badgers men's basketball team closed out its home season splitting with Scenic West Athletic Conference (SWAC) foes North Idaho and Southern Idaho. Tenth ranked North Idaho College (NIC) overwhelmed the Badgers 78-56 on Thursday, but the Badgers rebounded for a crucial 70-53 win over College of Southern Idaho (CSI) on Saturday.

     Snow forced NIC to overtime in two earlier meetings this season – NIC winning 84-77 in Ephraim and 82-77 in Coeur d'Alene. But on Thursday night, when beating Snow would give NIC a chance to capture the SWAC title two nights later with a win over Salt Lake, the Cardinals did not want to mess around with the Badgers.

     NIC guard Mikey Hope scored 13 first half points to guide the Cardinals to a 33-26 lead at the break. Snow opened the second half on fire, hitting three 3-pointers to pull to within a point at 36-35, and tying the score at 42 with just over five minutes gone in the second half. But then the Cardinals put their game in gear and went on a 20-5 run over the next six minutes leaving the Badgers in their wake.

     NIC's Hope and the Badger's Connor Van Brocklin shared game-high scoring honors with 19 points each. London Simonsen was the only other Badger in double figures with 11. Badger big man Cheikh Sane pulled down a game-high 10 rebounds.

     The Cardinals scored 30 points in the paint to only 10 for the Badgers, resulting in NIC shooting 47 percent from the floor to 30 percent for Snow.

     “Our guys battled, but we played a pretty good team tonight,” said Badger head coach Rob Nielson. “They know what we do so well,” Nielson said about meeting the Cardinals for the third time this season.

     Saturday's showdown with CSI was the last home game of the season for the Badgers, with sophomores Van Brocklin, Sane, Brad Mears and Nick Gruninger honored before tip off. The winner of Saturday's contest would take a stranglehold on third place in the SWAC behind leaders NIC and Salt Lake who were busy battling for first place in Salt Lake City.

     Five different Badgers hit 3-pointers in the first half as Snow shot 5-of-8 from long range to build a 38-31 lead at the break. Brock Smith led the way with 11 first half points. “We kind of overlook what Brock does every night,” Nielson said, “But game in and game out he's probably our most consistent player.”

      Sane pulled down 10 boards in the second half to finish with 17 for the game to go along with his 11 points. Van Brocklin again led all scorers with 19 points on 8-of-15 shooting from the floor.

     “Our whole defensive philosophy tonight was to force them away from where they had help,” Nielson said. The strategy worked as CSI shot only 7-for-24 from the floor in the second half and were 29 points under their season average of 82 points per game.

     The Badgers (6-7, 18-9) go on the road for the last week of the regular season, playing at Eastern Utah in Price (4-9, 14-14) on Thursday and closing out at Colorado Northwestern (0-13, 7-21) on Saturday. If the Badgers can sweep the road games they will clinch the third seed in the conference tournament next week. Salt Lake defeated NIC 74-69 Saturday night, and if they can sweep the same teams Snow will be playing on alternate nights, they will go into the tournament with the top seed. CSI would need to beat NIC on Saturday to have a chance to pass the Badgers in the tournament seeding.