Let me take you back to the 2021-2022 basketball season. The Boise State men’s basketball team started 3-4 before making Tyson Degenhart a starter and proceeding to go 24-3 – winning the Mountain West Tournament and earning an 8-seed in the NCAA Tournament.
At one point, the Broncos scored 39 points in a Quad 4 loss to Cal State Bakersfield.
November basketball is about figuring out your team, nailing down rotations and getting your team valuable experience before conference play. Every team is trying to learn themselves, but ultimately every game counts the same to your NCAA tournament resume. If that team had just started 5-2, there’s a good chance the Broncos get a 6-seed and bag their first win in Tournament history.
This year’s edition of the basketball Broncos is still finding themselves, but they’re building the beginnings of an NCAA Tournament resume. The Broncos are 3-1 and just picked up a massive home win over the Clemson Tigers. Clemson made the Elite 8 last season and projects as an NCAA Tournament team again this year. The Clemson win will more than likely be a Quad 1 or Quad 2 win as the season goes on.
Building your tournament resume early in the season is really about three things:
- Collect marquee non-conference wins
- Avoid bad losses
- Run it up on lower competition to juice your metrics
The Clemson win is obviously a feather in Coach Rice’s cap, but the Oakland win was crucial in building that third point for the Broncos.
Don’t believe me? Last year, Iowa State was able to collect a 2-seed despite an 11-2 record in noncon play against the 345th ranked non-conference strength of schedule. The Cyclones overcame a weak non-conference in part because their metrics were off the charts. Iowa State racked up 8 wins in noncon of 30+, including 3 wins of 50+. Iowa State wasn’t alone: UConn, Houston, Illinois and Kentucky all picked up top-3 seeds despite nonconference strength of schedules in the 200’s. All four of those teams crushed bad competition and then did enough in conference play to get a top seed.
Boise State’s win over Oakland was a great win in building up their metric profile and avoided a bad loss. Speaking of losses, I can already hear some of the more skeptical readers saying, “Well what about the San Francisco loss? That’s going to crush us come March!”
I’m not so sure.
When Boise State took on the Dons, USF was 96th in KenPom, they’re all the way up to 54th and should continue to climb as the preseason weighting drops out. San Francisco has opportunities to add to their resume this month with games against Memphis and Clemson (and of course, games against Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s in WCC play). I don’t think losing at San Francisco is a bad loss. Road losses are forgivable under the NET system, as long as San Francisco remains a top-75 opponent, that will go down as a Quad 1 loss for the Broncos. Would Leon and co. liked to have picked up a win? Of course, but losing to the Dons likely won’t go down as a bad loss for the Broncos.
Leon Rice is still figuring out this team, the Broncos returned only two players (Degenhart and Stanley) who played at least 30% of BSU’s minutes. The current 9-man rotation includes five newcomers to the team, and I don’t think this team has found their best lineups yet. Javan Buachanan is coming off the bench but has been on the floor for Boise State’s best stretches so far this season. Dylan Anderson is currently starting but only got 13 minutes against Clemson and doesn’t have a clarified role in the Broncos offense. RJ Keene can do a little bit of everything but disappeared at times in the San Francisco game. There are plenty of questions still to sort out, but the Broncos are taking care of business amidst the chaos.
As it stands, KenPom projects the Broncos to finish the regular season 22-7 (with two more opponents being TBD, both be games the Broncos are favored in). A 24-7 record going into conference play should be enough to put the Broncos in at-large contention. The Broncos head to the Cayman Islands next week to take part in the Cayman Islands Classic where they’ll have the chance to run up their metrics against inferior opponents. The best team in the field is High Point (108th in KenPom), so the Broncos will have to wait until December for another resume building win, but boosting the metrics early is just as important in building a tournament resume.
There’s a lot of season ahead of us, but four games into the season the Broncos are putting together the opening pieces of an NCAA Tournament resume.
