Whitefish star Colt Idol shooting for state with help from teammates
By FRITZ NEIGHBOR of the Missoulian
Colt Idol looks for a teammate to pass to last Friday against Bigfork. Idol finished with 24 points to lead the Bulldogs to a 68-56 victory over the Vikings.
Photo by CRAIG MOORE/for the Missoulian
Maybe, after a couple stress-fractured vertebrae, Colt Idol needed to take a load off.
The southpaw shooter for the Whitefish Bulldogs has shouldered a good part of their basketball offense the past three years. So while the Bulldogs head into the back end of their 2008-09 season, maybe Idol can afford to dial it back some.
Eric Stang, Whitefish's second-year coach, believes so.
“He has better teammates around him now,” said Stang, whose club is 6-4 after surviving an early four-game losing streak. “And he's learning to, and has done a good job of, passing up scoring opportunities and getting other people the ball. He's helped get more people involved.”
That wasn't always his job. Idol was, and to a large extent still is, a scorer. As a skinny sophomore on a team that had three contributors back from a 10-13 squad, Idol was first option.
Things didn't change much last year, when he averaged 22.3 points for the 13-11 Bulldogs.
The tough part was doing it despite a broken bone in his back. A reverse layup against Ronan heading into Christmas break brought back an injury that first happened during track season in 2007: He was goofing around on the basketball court, went up for a dunk, and landed on one leg.
“My leg was straight and all the force just went to my back,” Idol said. “Broke one of the wings on one of the lower vertebrae. It just kind of stayed there and bothered me.”
These days, with his back healed and his team sporting as much depth as it has seen in a while, the 6-foot-3 Idol is averaging 19.5 points and 5.6 rebounds a game. And if a 6-4 record doesn't dazzle you, know this: The Bulldogs began the previous two years 4-6 and 2-8 and made the State A tournament both seasons.
Idol stood 6-foot-1 when he was a sophomore on a team that actually began 0-8. Julio Delgado had come out of retirement for the season, and ran his usual tight ship. Idol remembers it well.
“He was so intense, and made us be disciplined,” he said. “We hadn't seen the results, but he was still so confident in us, that we were going to excel when we needed to.”
This is, of course, how it happened. The Bulldogs won 11 of 13 games at one point, including three at the Northwestern A Divisional tournament, and made state.
A year later Stang was in the fold, and Whitefish recovered from a slow start to go 9-3, including a challenge game victory at the Northwestern A.
Now Idol weighs 200 pounds, up 40 or so from his sophomore year. His size, leaping ability and shooting stroke make him a fairly hot commodity, and he intends to try his hand at Montana State University in Bozeman next season.
“I had done some camps in Missoula, and visited, and done a lot of this and that,” Idol said. “But they (the Grizzlies) were not that interested. It was between Carroll College and Montana State. I just decided I had to try the D-I level. Whether it works out or not, I had to try it.”
He comes from solid athletic stock: Colt's father Dick is a former North Carolina State defensive back (1967-69) who now is a well-known outdoorsman and sculptor: The “Wolfpack Turf” monument at N.C. State's Carter-Finley Stadium is his work. Idol's brother Cody is playing basketball for the University of Great Falls.
Colt Idol played basketball and football most of his life, but gave up the gridiron after breaking a collarbone his sophomore year. By then he'd taken up track, where he's shown consistent improvement in the high jump: 5-foot-8 as an eighth-grader, 6-0 as a freshman, 6-4 as a junior and a school-record 6-8� at state last May.
“It's kind of weird,” he said, and chuckles. “Seven feet wouldn't be too bad.”
But basketball is the sport. Stang, who coached in the Frontier Conference at MSU-Northern, sees a lot of potential in this year's team. But there are growing pains, on both sides, and perhaps Delgado's brief return had lasting positive effects.
“A lot of their coaching styles are similar,” Idol noted. “The intensity is similar. We knew that going in. There were a few things we weren't expecting, but overall it was a pretty smooth transition.”
One constant has been harping on defense. One problem has been finishing off games.
“We got real frustrated after the Glacier game,” Stang said of a 78-77 loss at the Class AA Kalispell school in December. “Because that was a game we were in control of for most of the time. That was a tough loss, because for the most part as a team we played really well. We just got into foul trouble.”
Three more losses followed, two of them by one point, and Idol was shooting just a shade over 30 percent during the skid.
Then the Bulldogs avenged a 67-66 loss home loss to Kalispell Flathead by beating the Braves 68-50 on the road on Jan. 10. And there was last Saturday's home game against Northwestern A power Columbia Falls.
While Idol scored 12 points and collected 10 rebounds, two more Bulldogs reached double figures in the 52-47 win, their fourth straight.
“The biggest thing (in the losses) that I saw was they didn't have the trust and belief in each other as much as they needed to,” said Stang. “And you could see it these last four games. We played a good game against Columbia Falls, which was a big game for us. We had a rough start (the Wildcats jumped out to a 17-6 lead), and they didn't drop their heads and didn't stop believing in themselves.”
And Idol, it can be noted, had some foul trouble in the second half.
“Essentially, our defense carried us from there,” said Stang.
Senior guard Aaron Tkachyk is Whitefish's other main scoring threat, averaging 11.9 points a game, while Matt Whitehead and Willie Roche distribute the ball. Giving the Bulldogs a boost is a resurgent post game led by Josh Backer (6.5 points a game), Connor Silliker and David FauntLeRoy.
FauntLeRoy and Marc Hotzfield embody hustle on a team that, in 20 seasons under Delgado, never lacked for it.
“He's inside-out, and pretty productive in limited minutes,” Stang said of Hotzfield. “We do have some depth this year. The kids understand their roles, and Colt and Aaron do a good job of leadership.”
Says Idol, “We have more scorers now than we had then. I get some game planning and a lot of tough defenses on me, and so I don't score as much for those reasons. But that helps out our team.”
Yet Idol heads into Saturday's game at Polson with 1,195 career points, which is unofficially No. 2 in Whitefish history and within range of the 1,375 scored by career leader Steve Kastella, a teammate of Delgado's who graduated in 1970.
The main weapon for Idol is that old throwback, the mid-range jumper.
“He's really good,” Stang says of his leader. “He's a good spot-up shooter, and good at shooting off the dribble. The mid-range jumper is kind of a lost art� but they take away the three and he's able to drive, pull up and knock it down.”
If Idol knocks down a few and the Bulldogs remain on balance, another trip to state could be in store. Idol has hopes of rounding out his game - honing his ball-handling, improving his defense - for the Big Sky Conference, but the immediate goal is to getting into state and doing some damage.
“Our goal is to play on Saturday night,” said Idol, whose two trips to state were two-losses-and-out. “Either the third-and-fourth game or the state championship.”
The Bobcats can wait.
“I've been trying to get figure out what I need to do to play at the next level,” Idol says. “I get super excited. Then I remember we've got a whole season left here to finish up.”
And he's got some help carrying that load.[/b]
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