Even though the state of Idaho is painted at center court — with a solid black body, a green and white outline and a green star positioned over Boise — there will be no Idaho teams in the Big Sky Conference championship games this week at CenturyLink Arena.
That was expected on the men’s side, but not the women’s.
The Idaho women were the conference’s regular-season champion. They possessed two of the best shooters the Big Sky has ever seen in Taylor Pierce and Mikayla Ferenz. The Idaho State women were the third seed and the Bengals made deep runs in the tournament in 2016 and 2017.