PULLMAN – To place the Battle of the Palouse into historical context, the basketball teams at Washington State and Idaho had already been playing each other for 49 years when Cougars coach Ernie Kent was born in 1955. Another full decade of Cougars v. Vandals on the hardwood elapsed by the time Idaho’s Don Verlin was born in 1965.
As far as NCAA Division I college basketball is concerned, no rivalry game west of the Mississippi River, or outside of the Ivy League, has had more legs than the one between WSU and Idaho. And while it seems feasible two schools separated by eight miles of highway could keep this going for another 114 years, stranger things have happened.