A week and a half ago Boise State’s season hit, in the words of Leon Rice, rock bottom. The Broncos lost on a late game winner to Colorado State and fell to 13-7 and 5-4 in Mountain West play. The Mountain West preseason favorites seemed on the edge of disaster and Leon promised serious changes. Since then, the Broncos have won consecutive games at home, 66-56 over Nevada and 82-60 over Fresno State, and now travel to Las Vegas to take on UNLV.
Can the Broncos keep their winning streak going? Let’s dive into Tuesday’s game, what happened in the first matchup, and what the Broncos must do to move to 16-7.
What happened in round one?
In the first matchup between the Broncos and the Rebels, Boise State trounced UNLV 81-59. The Broncos never trailed, leading by 19 at halftime and by as many as 28. Tyson Degenhart led the way with 21 points and 11 rebounds, and Alvaro Cardenas, O’Mar Stanley and Javan Buchanan all scored in double digits.
The story of the game was Boise State’s dominance on the interior. Boise State had 40 points in the paint and a plus-17 rebounding advantage. Seemingly whenever the Broncos decided to attack inside, they were able to get open looks at the rim. Cardenas was an orchestra director, facilitating Boise State’s offensive symphony to the tune of 9 assists and 0 turnovers; getting the better of UNLV’s star point guard Dedan Thomas.
Even the most critical Boise State fans couldn’t complain about Boise State’s win over UNLV. If one were to get really nit-picky, Boise State shot poorly from three (8/30, 27%); otherwise, Boise State played as well as fans and coaches could ask for. As it relates to the rematch in Las Vegas, if Boise State plays as well as they did in round one, they will push their winning streak to three.
How will this game look different?
After a 3-0 start to Mountain West play, the Rebels have lost 6 of their last 8 games in conference play, including four in a row since a stunning win at San Diego State. All four losses for the Rebels have been down-to-the-wire, so possibly Kevin Kruger isn’t eager to make changes, but Boise State fans know how losses (even close ones) can lead for drastic changes.
The biggest change that UNLV’s made since their first matchup with Boise State is their rotation at the five. Against Boise State, UNLV played Jeremiah Cherry 28 minutes and otherwise largely played small-ball. Since then, they’ve started to rely more heavily on reserve center Pape N’Diaye. In UNLV’s most recent game, a 71-65 loss to Nevada, N’Diaye played 25 minutes off the bench, with Cherry getting just 15 minutes. N’Diaye is a true 7-footer who provides elite rim protection and is an exceptional rebounder. He’s not the offensive threat that Cherry is, but N’Diaye will provide a unique challenge for Boise State that they hardly saw in the first matchup (N’Diaye played 8 minutes in the previous matchup).
As for the Broncos, very little has stayed the same since the first matchup. RJ Keene didn’t play, but is in line to stat this time around. Meanwhile, Chris Lockett and Dylan Anderson started the first matchup and have since been relegated to the 10th and 11th man. Arguably the biggest change is the pivot to small-ball lineups with Tyson Degenhart at the five. Leon has played Degenhart at the five over 40% of the time the past two games. Neither Fresno State or Nevada have massive inside presences, but Cherry is listed at 6-11, 280 pounds. Does Leon play Ugbo/Stanley/Anderson more to matchup? If not, how does Tyson hold up guarding traditional centers? What we see against UNLV will likely be an indicator of what Leon decides to do later on against potential All-conference bigs: New Mexico’s Nelly Junior Joseph and San Diego State’s Magoon Gwath.
Stats to know
The Broncos are 2-4 in true road games this season. The two wins are San Jose State by 2 and Wyoming by 9. A win in Vegas would be the best road win of the season for the Broncos.
Boise State forced 14 turnovers in the first matchup. UNLV has been good at taking care of the basketball this season and were uncharacteristically sloppy with the ball at ExtraMile Arena. Can Boise State’s ball pressure keep up or does UNLV take care of the ball this time around?
UNLV was 6/14 from three in the previous matchup. That’s 43%! Very good! However, if you told Leon Rice that they’ll only give up 6 threes to the Rebels on Tuesday, I think he takes that all-day. UNLV doesn’t take a lot of 3’s in general, but expect them to take more than 14 threes this time around.
Broncos At-Large update
As the season has hit road blocks there has been plenty of discussion about Boise State’s at-large hopes and whether or not they still have a chance. At the end of each article, I’ll provide a brief update on where various metrics and bracket experts have the Broncos’ at-large chances:
Boise State picked up a Quad 4 win over Fresno State on Saturday. It won’t move the needle for Boise’s at-large hopes, but it avoids a loss that would’ve eliminated those hopes altogether. It also provided a slight boost to Boise’s predictive metrics. KenPom gives Boise State a 1.8% chance of winning out, the mark that I think Boise State will need to reach to be on the right side of the bubble. Bart Torvik believes Boise State still has a mulligan left; his teamcast metric gives Boise State a 17% chance of an at-large bid. With a win against UNLV, those odds rise to 20.5% and a loss plummets those odds to 7.3% (which still seems a bit high to me, personally).
This UNLV game is of particular importance for the Broncos, as it offers their first chance at a Quad 2 win on the season. Boise State is a serviceable 2-3 in Quad 1 wins, but their 0-3 mark in Quad 2 is the biggest hinderance on Boise State’s resume. A win over UNLV on the road would be a massive resume builder for the Broncos.
Nathan Carroll is a part-time contributor for Bronco Nation News and host of the TBA Basketball Podcast. Nathan works for Pro Football Focus as part of their data collection team, specializing in charting player data at the FBS level. Previously, he graduated from Boise State’s Honors College with a degree in Quantitive Economics and worked 5 years in Boise State’s athletic department. Follow him on X at Nathan_26_
