MOSCOW, Idaho – The Spokane Hoopfest tournament is nearly here, and tens of thousands of competitors will take the court in the largest 3-on-3 competition in the world.

Before this, however, some of the best in basketball’s history will be immortalized at the fourth-annual Hooptown Hall of Fame ceremony on Wednesday. Among the nominees for this prestigious society will be the 1981-82 Idaho Basketball team, alongside their head coach, Don Monson.

Widely considered one of the greatest seasons in school history, the 81-82 Vandals took the Big Sky Conference, and all of DI Basketball, by storm as they marched out to a 27-3 record, still the best all-time. The black and gold would be denied by very few as they went 13-1 in Big Sky play and achieved noteworthy non-conference wins over Oregon, Oregon State, Gonzaga, Washington, and Washington State to start the season 12-0. 

Sporting one of the most tenacious defenses in college basketball, Idaho allowed just 57.5 PPG as a team across 30 games, a top-20 mark in the country by the end of the year. This culminated in the #1 seed in the Big Sky Tournament, which the Vandals had earned the right to host due to securing the top spot. Inside the Kibbie Dome-turned-Cowan Spectrum, the top-seeded black and gold knocked off Weber State in the Semifinals and took down Nevada in the championship to earn the berth to the NCAA Tournament. 

As the #3 seed in the west, the Vandals matched up with the #16 Iowa Hawkeyes in what was effectively a home game in Washington State’s Beasley Coliseum. UI(daho) forward Phil Hopson led the scoring with a game-high 21 points, and four of five Vandal starters finished in double figures to win an overtime thriller, 69-67. The win was cemented by Brian Kellerman’s 18-foot buzzer-beater to end the extra period and send Idaho to the Sweet 16. 

The 81-82 squad was led by one of the most well-known faces in the history of Vandal Hoops. Don Monson was entering his fourth year at the helm of the program and had led his team to what was, at the time, the best season in school history. The Vandals finished with a program best 25-4 record in the 80-81 season and had reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever. They topped both of those notables with the 27-win season and Sweet 16 appearance the following year as Monson established himself as one of the best coaches in Idaho history. To date, he is one of only two coaches to lead the Vandals to the Tournament and the only coach in school history with a win under his belt.

In five years coaching in Moscow, Monson would finish with a 100-41 career record, the third most wins for an Idaho head coach to date. In those five years, his teams finished with ten losses or less in four of them and captured two Big Sky regular season titles and two conference tournament titles.  

The induction ceremony will take place on Wednesday, June 25th, at the Hooptown Courts.

While one DeBoer was coaching at Alabama this past year, another DeBoer was still succeeding at Washington.

The former was Kalen DeBoer, the Crimson Tide football coach who left the Huskies to replace Nick Saban. The latter was his daughter Alexis DeBoer, the softball infielder who stayed in Washington and became an instant success.

Alexis DeBoer put together a year in which she won Big Ten freshman of the year honors while leading the Huskies to the NCAA Tournament.

“I’m super proud of her, what she accomplished,” Kalen DeBoer told AL.com in June. “There’s a lot of eyes on her, just because of the nature of what I do. For her to be able to continue on her path and make a name for herself is something as a parent, I couldn’t be more proud of.”

Kalen DeBoer discussed his daughter’s success as part of the latest episode of “Beat Everyone” an AL.com Alabama football podcast. The full show will be released Monday night, accessible on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Alexis DeBoer finished the year with a batting average of .358 and 21 home runs to go with 55 RBIs. Each statistics led the Washington roster.

“She had a great season,” Kalen DeBoer said. “The cool thing is, I just feel like there’s a hunger. That’s that competitiveness that you want to where there’s more even being done now to make sure it continues in that direction.”

As an Auburn fan, I remember the Cam Newton saga all too well.

The 2010 Auburn football team, led in many ways by the one-man-team of Newton, would go on to post a perfect 14-0 record and pick up many awards accolated to the greatest players in the sport. Newton had one of the best seasons in college football history and made his team one of the most fun to watch in recent memory.

Still, Auburn and Newton were painted as the sport’s supervillains in 2010 – due to unproven allegations of Auburn paying Newton less than $200,000.

In today’s climate, a player of Newton’s caliber would command seven figures to play quarterback in college, and whichever college team paid him would be lauded for their ability to out pay everyone else. Times have changed.

College athletes deserved some of the compensation, with the athletic conferences signing deals in the $100s of millions for television contracts and top tier coaches making north of $5 million per year, but the lack of rules around paying players for their Name Image Likeness (NIL) has made the top-tier of college athletics the wild west of sports.

Due to a powerful booster signing on, Brigham Young University (BYU) was able to secure the commitment of the No. 1 high school basketball player in AJ Dybsanta – a player who had no connections to the Utah based school before he heard the reportedly $7 million offer.

Pay for play instances can be good for parity, but it also lets traditional powerhouses gobble up commitments. Without rules, things were bound to spiral out of control.

Now, through the results of several court cases levied against the NCAA, new rules are on the horizon. And through revenue sharing, clearing house protocol, and public endorsements deals, fair market values for NIL are close to being established and monitored.

If things go well with revenue sharing and the clearing house models, teams will have similar cap spaces for contract spending and any given athlete will have the same price tag at any school they choose. If a team tries to overpay, in theory, the clearing house could deny the deal.

The gist of the new revenue sharing model is that any school can share up to $20.5 million of its revenue throughout its athletic department. In an example from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Texas Tech University plans to split all of its $20.5 million, with its football team earning 74 percent, its men’s basketball team earning about 18 percent, and the remaining four percent split among other sports.

While the splits don’t seem completely fair out of context, the football team demands more than 80 players and the price tags for football and men’s basketball far exceed other sports.

With revenue sharing, the rich will stay rich – but it won’t allow the richest of the rich to run wild with pay-for-play contracts. It’ll also give the smaller schools more resources to draw from for their own contracts, as NIL deals were required to come from boosters and outside resources in the past. Now, the schools can pay some of that money.

This is a move to make college sports more legitimate in a world where NIL rules. These rules will help college sports keep the passion that comes from being an “amateur” while athletes rake in some of the perks that come with being a famous athlete.

Long gone were the days of under-the-table fast food bags filled with cash to entice top-tier recruits to join one football program or the other, or at least the college football world thought when introducing a way for athletes to benefit from their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) in 2021.

The new NIL era has introduced a wave of problems, litigation, and it is safe to say that the NCAA is still working out a solution on how to fairly compensate athletes and reduce tampering in what will likely be known as the “wild west” of college athletics in the years to come.

No program is immune to scandals with such a vast amount of revenue being poured through its locker room, but one Florida State rival seems to be on the brink of facing consequences after getting caught with its hand in the cookie jar.

The University of Wisconsin and its NIL collective filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the University of Miami Hurricanes in state circuit court on Friday, accusing the university of tortious interference, according to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports.

The suit claims that Miami illegally poached defensive back Xavier Lucas, referred to in the filing as “Student-Athlete A,” while he was under contract with the Badgers.

“Miami interfered with UW-Madison’s relationship with Student-Athlete A (Lucas) by making impermissible contact with him and engaging in tampering.”

READ MORE: Three former Seminoles listed in ESPN’s NFL All Quarter Century Team

“Knowingly inducing” an athlete to have a change of heart and play for your school while they are currently under contract is a blatant violation of transfer practices and NCAA policies (in fact, the transfer portal was closed at the time of the violation). Although Wisconsin reportedly was hesitant to escalate the issue, the school said that it was “committed to ensuring integrity and fundamental fairness in the evolving landscape of college athletics.”

While the school won’t be pursuing any legal action against Lucas, the move could (and should) prompt a higher oversight at the program level from administrations that would like to keep their hands clean of the bad press, lawsuits, and relationship-breaking consequences that can arise as the country tries to paddle the murky waters of the new NIL era.

As for Miami? Well, some habits are hard to break.

READ MORE: Cornerback prospect shuts down recruitment, sticks with Florida State

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The high school softball season around the country finally came to an end this past weekend with the Maine Principal Association (MPA) state championships. The four contests were played between St. Joseph’s College and the University of Maine.

Four state title games took place from Classes A to D, with the MPA crowning champions in each classification.

In the Class A state championship tilt between Windham and Edward Little, the Eagles blanked the Red Eddies, 7-0, behind a strong pitching performance from senior hurler Kennedy Kimball. The pitcher went the distance, allowing just two mere hits and striking out a game-high 11.

Medomak Valley edging Hermon, 1-0, for the Class B state crown was the tightest contest in terms of scoring of any game out of the weekend. Panthers’ pitcher Sydney Nichols brought her best stuff in the circle, striking out 12, yielding just three hits and leading the program to their first state championship since 1995.

Another Maine state championship game that involved a stellar performance from their senior pitcher was Bucksport upending Hall-Dale, 6-2, for the Class C title. It was senior Natalie Simpson closing the door on the Bulldogs, with the pitcher pitching all seven frames, giving up four hits, two runs and fanning 12 batters along the way.

Lastly in the Class D state title tilt between Buckfield and Penobscot Valley, it would be the Bucks defeating the Howlers 5-0. Brittany Carrier belted a home run and Carmen Crocket pitched a nearly perfect game, going seven innings, one hit, no walks and striking out 16 batters. With the win, Buckfield notched the program’s 10th state championship.

The New England region has always been one of the final areas around the country to wrap up spring sports. Just last weekend, Connecticut held its state championship games.