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Thomas emerges as a star
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It was a big week for Boise State freshman guard Anthony Thomas last week. Thomas hadn’t scored more than seven points in a game since Jan. 25 before but blew up last week for 18 and 16 points against Montana Western University and University at Albany. His performance last week was good enough to earn Western Athletic Conference
Player of the Week honors. Thomas is the third Bronco to win the award this season.
“It means a lot,” Thomas said about receiving the award. “It means that I’m proceeding to do well in basketball and doing what I’m able to do on the basketball court. It just means that I’m learning and that I’m starting to get this game. College level is different than high school. It’s faster pace. It just means that I’m finally picking up the game, thinking better and playing better.”
Thomas’ great week was capped off by a game winning three-
pointer against Albany in BSU’s “Bracket-buster” game played Saturday night. Thomas buried a three-point shot with just over 30 seconds to play and the Broncos trailing by two. The bucket sealed a huge victory for BSU and improved its record to 15-10 on the season. When asked if the game winning three was the biggest bucket of his young collegiate career, Thomas replied, “I would think so.”
“It’s just all about confidence,” Thomas said. “That’s what basketball is all about. I’m slowly gaining that confidence by learning through this organization. I felt pretty confident that I was going to make that shot.”
Thomas sat out last season as a red-shirt coming off of a tremendous high school career. The six-foot guard from Mansfield, Texas was a McDonald’s All-American nominee his senior year.
During his senior season he averaged over 15 points per game, nearly six rebounds and over four steals and assists per
contest as well. His talent has started to blossom at BSU, particularly sense he’s been able to settle into a role where he doesn’t have to carry the team on his shoulders.
“Coming into this year I didn’t really have any expectations,” Thomas said. “I just talked to coach and I had a role. My role was just to play hard defense and to try to run the show a little bit. I think coach had expectations and I think I’m somewhat fitting into his expectations so far.”
Thomas certainly did a good job of exceeding expectations last week. He went 6-of-7 from the field against Montana Western.
He scored 16 points, added four steals and dropped six assists while he was at it. But he didn’t stop there. He earned player of the week honors by duplicating his performance from earlier in the week against Albany, pouring in 16 more points on 6-of-9 shooting from the floor.
Although neither of those point totals was a career high, those two combined are the highest amount Thomas had produced in back-to-back games as a Bronco. Thomas said he hopes to continue his hot streak this week as BSU will host
San Jose State and then Nevada in one of the biggest games of the season this Saturday.
“We play good at home and the Nevada game has always been the big game for us,” Thomas said. “Looking at past history we’ve played them close at our place. It’s senior night also, so hopefully the energy from senior night will help us get the victory. Because Nevada is a real good team, they’ve got a lot of weapons, but the way we play at home, I think we should be able to pull it off.”
As for Thomas, he’ll likely continue his role of coming off
the bench trying to help his team win ball games coming down
the backstretch.
“It’s just going to come down to us taking care of business,” Thomas said. “And doing what we need to do.”
KYE JOHNSON
Assistant Sports Editor
