‘It’s a team that knows how to win;’ What Leon Rice said after Boise State survives at Fresno State

The Boise State men’s basketball team made enough plays down the stretch Saturday afternoon to earn a 66-61 Mountain West Conference road victory over Fresno State.

The Broncos (21-8, 13-5) trailed 59-56 with under five minutes to go but closed the game on a 10-2 scoring run. It was the 11th consecutive loss for Fresno State (5-24, 1-17).

Andrew Meadow led the way with 22 points and six rebounds for the Broncos, who have won eight of their last nine games. Tyson Degenhart notched a double-double with 14 points, 11 rebounds, three assists and two steals.

“It’s a team that knows how to win,” Boise State head coach Leon Rice said after the game. “And just hung in there, hung in there … and made some big plays down the stretch.”

Here are the highlights from Rice’s postgame radio interview.

On finishing strong

“At about the five-minute mark, I said ‘Guys, we’ve been here before. Our best quality is we know how to win.’ And (Fresno State) has lost a lot of close games. I was looking at their scores today. They get blown out every once and a while, but they’ve had five overtime games and lost them all.

“I have to give Fresno and their coaching staff a lot of props because … they’ve been through a lot. They’ve been through a long season of losing. They had stuff go wrong with having to suspend guys and stuff. And that’s a team that played their tails off and played as hard as they could.”

On getting better minutes from freshmen on the road

“The freshmen, they’ve played great at home a lot of nights. We need some great nights from them on the road. I always tell these guys that boys can play at home and play good; men play good on the road. It’s a hard thing to do. That other team’s got more energy. You’re playing with different balls, different rims, different backgrounds. You’ve got to have some mental toughness to play good on the road.”

On attacking Fresno State’s zone defense

“They play a zone, so it’s maybe a little harder to cut guys out of the herd and get fouls on them. Our guys did a good job of not settling in the second half. But we still wanted to attack because … as you saw, we got a lot in transition, and we got to the line a lot because of transition.”

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