Well, that was quick. The end of the basketball season, I mean, for Idaho State.

The men were one-and-done, punched in the mouth by Montana State, who then did a dive of their own, losing convincingly to Northern Colorado in the semifinals.

The ISU women gave us a little more entertainment, probably what may have been their best all-around game of the season in eliminating Weber State in the first round. But then Montana State showed up in their bracket, and it was time to start contemplating transfer portals, new recruits and spring conditioning drills for the Bengals.

Not a disastrous visit to our state’s capital, but certainly not a satisfying one.

Now Bengal fans wait to see what’s left of the roster of both teams that played entertaining basketball this past season, who both have solid foundations of returning players available if, IF, they choose to return next year.

The big question for the men, of course, is whether Big Sky Conference MVP Dylan Darling will return. He has been largely positive in recent interviews about wanting to come back, we know the ISU Orange and Black Collective is working to put together a substantial name, image and likeness deal to let the 6-foot-1 sophomore point guard know how much he is appreciated, and we know his family is supportive of him playing another season in Orange and Black.

But Idaho State men’s basketball coach Ryan Looney is still recovering from the PTSD he endured last March, after his team won two Big Sky Conference Tournament games and had all the makings of another contender with available eligibility — and nearly all of them hit the transfer portal.

“Last year at this time, I thought everybody was coming back,” Looney said recently. And we know how that turned out.

So we wait. The portal for basketball opens on March 24 and players have until April 24 to enter. They can announce their intention to enter the portal at any time. As we observed last season, that means players can leave a coach hanging for a month, then make a last-second decision to bail. Or to stay. But then the coach gets to make the final decision whether to take the player back — which Looney had to do on a couple of players last season.

In the meantime, Looney’s philosophy has become to recruit as many good players as you can and then figure it out. Right now, if everybody who can come back does, that would give him four solid starters in Darling, center Evan Otten and forwards Connor Hollenbeck and Isaiah Griffin.

Off the bench, forwards Blake Daberkow, who really came on at the end of the season, and Jackson Greene, who was a solid contributor most of the season, can return. Role players Quentin Meza, Jaedyn Brown and Joey Madimba, all guards, saw little action and, if they do return, would need to show some significant development in the off-season to get meaningful minutes next year.

The Bengals also have two redshirts in guard Martin Kheil, who joined the team from the Czech Republic in January, and forward Cheikh Sow, who sat out all season recovering from a leg injury, who they are waiting to see in live action.

Kheil is an older player with a lot of European experience, even though he’ll be listed as a freshman. Sow is a JC transfer who the Bengal coaching staff had high hopes for before he got injured.

Finally, ISU signed two high school players in November: guard Landen Birley, who was named to the Washington State 4A all-tournament team and averaged 28 points a game as a senior at West Valley High School in Yakima, and Louis Bond, a 6-5 wing player out of Los Angeles.

It typically takes freshmen a year or two to become significant contributors at the Division I level, but sometimes a particularly mature high school player comes in and makes an immediate contribution.

That’s 13 scholarship players, which is the current limit that ISU will be living under this coming season, after choosing not to opt into the new NCAA roster rules. If any of those players choose to leave, of course, that opens the door for Looney and his staff to hit the transfer portal or the junior college ranks to see if they can find immediate contributors.

What the conference tournament debacle against Montana State showed us is that having a decent regular season doesn’t always translate into success in the post-season. If, and again I use the word if, the Bengals can keep the most important players on their roster for next season, the experience of playing together — especially in the conference tournament — will be invaluable.

And then it will be a question if ISU can add the pieces they need to fill in the holes from this year’s team. They’ll be losing Jake O’Neil, for example, their best rebounder, one of their best defenders and their spiritual leader. Who will step up to provide the energy that O’Neil brought?

They also need to identify a couple of solid, consistent three-point shooting threats — consistent being the operative word here.

We’ll start to get a clearer picture on all these questions over the next month and a half.

ONE MORE OBSERVATION

Why is it that every year during the Big Sky Conference post-season tournament, the officials make a 180-degree shift in philosophy? Contact that has been called a foul all season long is all of a sudden OK, and the Big Sky suddenly becomes the Big Ten when it comes to physicality?

Are the officials just auditioning for an NCAA tournament job, knowing that the people who make those assignments favor fewer foul calls during the tournament? Or is there some kind of memo that goes out to the officials at the beginning of the tournament every year that tells them to let contact go?

It’s ironic to me that the NCAA went on a campaign a few years ago to increase freedom of movement for offensive players and put an end to the body checking that frequently occurs when players try to move through the lane. We saw a concerted effort during the regular season to call off-the-ball contact more vigorously. Yet in the Big Sky tournament every year, any kind of holding, grabbing or bodying up seems to be OK.

I suppose the players and coaches should know by now that the officiating approach is going to be drastically different in the tournament and they need to adjust, but it sure makes for an ugly and disjointed stye of play in the tournament. If you really want to encourage physical play in the post-season, let’s call it that way all season so the players and coaches can become accustomed.