Vandal QB McCoy was nearly a corner

Tonight, Northern Arizona at Idaho, 6 p.m. TV: ESPN+ Radio: 92.5 FM, 1080 AM

By MARK NELKE

Sports editor

Gevani McCoy has played well since beginning the season as the Idaho Vandals

So well that coach Jason Eck, without prompting during his weekly meeting with area media, heaped praise on the redshirt freshman, who last week completed 18 of 20 passes (90%) in a 27-10 victory at Northern Arizona to open Big Sky Conference play.

“He set the school record for completion percentage, and there’s been some pretty damn good quarterbacks over the years (at Idaho). Two of them are on the wall (numbers retired),” Eck said.

One of those, John Friesz (Coeur d’Alene High), held the previous record, going 28 of 33 (.848) in an Oct. 14, 1989 game against Montana State.

McCoy, who saw limited action last season due to injuries to players above him on the depth chart, beat out redshirt freshman CJ Jordan, who played in four games last year before being injured, and J’Bore Gibbs, who transfered from South Dakota State, where Eck coached the last six seasons before taking over at Idaho this year.

And to think …

“When we first got here, we knew we had to thin out our quarterback room,” Eck said. “We were talking, ‘Maybe we should try to look at Gevani as a corner.’ But he showed some things in spring ball that gave us encouragement. The one thing Gevani does is, he’s very coachable, and it develops a lot of trust when a player does that.”

For the season, McCoy is 69 of 98 for 775 yards and six touchdowns, with two interceptions.

Idaho (2-2, 1-0 Big Sky) plays host to Northern Colorado (2-2, 1-0) in its homecoming game tonight at 6 at the Kibbie Dome in Moscow. The Vandals are trying to start 2-0 in conference for the first time since 2009, when they were an FBS team in the Sun Belt and went on to win a bowl game.

Northern Colorado running back Elijah Dodson, a transfer from Sacramento State, was the Big Sky’s special teams player of the week last week. He had 208 all-purpose yards, including an 82-yard punt return touchdown and 102 yards rushing in a 35-14 win over Idaho State.

Northern Colorado was picked to finish 11th by the media, and tied for 11th by the coaches, in the 12-team Big Sky. (Idaho was picked to finish eighth by the coaches, ninth by the media; NAU was picked to finish seventh by both.)

In recent years, Idaho has played its home games at 2 p.m. — sometimes playing earlier or later due to television. Eck said he requested the late kickoff this week.

“This is going to be a big recruiting weekend for us,” he said. “We’re going to have 10 players on official visits this weekend. Actually, all 10 are already committed, so they’re guys that we got here in the summer, and it’s just become a necessary thing to do with the early signing period, because we’re building this program forward like we’re going to be busy some in December. We want to be playing football in December still, so getting these official visits is very important because if you’re in the playoffs, you could be on the road, and you can’t host official visits when you’re on the road, so that’s why we’re doing it.

“And it works very well for us because we have a bye week next week. We have time to have the recruits in, and spend time with them on Sunday, it won’t affect our next game because we’ll have a whole ‘nother week to prepare for it. And as it works out this year, Montana has the same bye week we do. By Sunday morning we’ll have all the information we need to prepare for them.”

Of course, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, Eck had another reason for requesting the late start.

“Plus we wanted to give the fans and the students a little extra time to pre-game and tailgate, and be extra raucous for a 6 o’clock game,” Eck said.