The Hangover: Broncos drop to 0-5 in league play

Kenny Buckner looses the handle against Wyoming Saturday.(David Wuerth/The Arbiter)

Life in the Mountain West Conference for the men’s basketball team seems to keep getting tougher.

The Broncos (10-10, 0-5), coming off a physical and emotional loss to the University of Nevada, Las-Vegas Wednesday night were unable to bounce back as the University of Wyoming (17-4, 3-2) rode into Taco Bell arena stealing a conference victory 67-53.

“Even in losses like these, we’ve got to always find something to keep us going,” sophomore center Ryan Watkins said.

Similar to Wednesday night’s defeat, the Boise offense struggled early to put points on the board as they managed to score only five points in the first 12 minutes of the first half.

The game slowly started to pick up as Watkins led the way with 10 points on 3-of-5 shooting, along with six rebounds.

That, however, was just small change as the Broncos found themselves down double-digits, 33-20 headed into intermission.

“You look around (MW league) and there’s nowhere to come up for error in this league and that’s what we’re facing,” Head Coach Leon Rice said. “You can’t give a C or B
effort in this league.”

The second half was full of ups and downs.

BSU was down by as many as 20 points, yet managed to battle back after a Wes Perryman breakaway dunk, coupled by some big shots from senior Tre Nichols and freshman guard Joe Handstad—who had a career high 13 points—helped cut the lead to as low as nine.

As Rice mentioned in his post-game press conference, teams in the MW across the board can really score and, to be successful, his young team has to be able to capitalize.

“We have to play with such an edge to compete with these teams. When we don’t they really take advantage of it,” Rice said. “When you do get a look you’ve got to make
them pay.”

Some of the loss could be blamed on the roller coaster ride the team was on Wednesday night, which may have carried over, but that is far from an excuse.

The Broncos are still a young team adjusting to a better brand of basketball as opposed to what they would have gone up against in the Western Athletic Conference.

“It’s really tough because there comes a time where you just want them to be rewarded for some hard work,” Rice said.

The next few games will present just as much of a challenge if not more, as the Broncos will head to southern Calif. Feb. 1 to face the No. 13 San Diego State Aztecs (18-2, 4-0) at 7 p.m., before returning home to host the University of New Mexico Lobos (16-4, 2-2) Feb. 5.

If these boys in blue have any hopes of turning the rest of the season around, it needs to show this week.

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Posted by Tyler Hawkins on Jan 30 2012. Filed under Main Feature, Sports, Sports Main Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.