GEORGE TOWN, Grand Cayman – For the first time since 2017, the Boise State men’s basketball team is moving on to the winner’s bracket in an early season tournament.
Tyson Degenhart had 25 points and O’Mar Stanley added 13 points as the Broncos topped Hampton, 83-69, in the first round of the Cayman Islands Classic at John Gray Gymnasium on Sunday morning.
It’s the first win the opening game of a ‘multi-team event’ for the Broncos since they defeated UTEP back in November of 2017. The Broncos had lost five straight opening round games prior to Sunday’s win.
“It was a good win,” Boise State coach Leon Rice told BNN. “We played a really good first half. I thought our guys had a great approach and it showed by the way we started.”
Boise State led by as many as 23 points late in the first half and held a 41-21 lead at the break.
But Hampton, which made just six field goals in the first half and shot 26 percent, charged back in the second half thanks to 51 percent shooting (20 of 39) in the second half.
The lead dipped to as little as 73-62 with 3:50 to go but the Broncos held on for the 14-point victory.
“We had them at arms length pretty good for most of the second half even though we didn’t get all the stops we wanted and we didn’t build on the lead,” Rice said. “They went really small on us and fouled us and made us make free throws and they were just truing to get 3s.”
Boise State went 27 of 35 from the foul line, had a 40-24 edge on the glass and a 44-30 edge in the paint.
The Broncos, who shot 54 percent from the field for the game and had 20 assists on 26 field goals, got nine points from Dylan Anderson and eight points and eight assists from Alvaro Cardenas. With a bucket in the second half Cardenas reached 1,000 career points spanning his three years at San Jose State and first year at Boise State.
Emmanuel Ugbo and RJ Keene both provided key bench minutes down the stretch and finished out the game due to impact plays on both ends of the floor. Ugbo finished with nine points and four rebounds in 12 minutes.
“Hey we went 1-0 and that’s all that matters,” Degenhart said. “That was our mission coming into the game, just to get the ‘W’. It wasn’t the ideal way we wanted to get it done, but I’m just happy we got the win.”
Boise State advances to play South Dakota State on Monday at 11:30 a.m. MT in the semifinals. Bronco Nation News will be live from Grand Cayman with the Lithia Ford of Boise Pregame Show at 10 a.m. MT on the BNN YouTube, Facebook and X accounts.
Watch highlights and the full postgame show from Sunday’s win over Hampton below:
HIGHLIGHTS
POSTGAME SHOW WITH INTERVIEWS
