What Boise State head coach Leon Rice said about sweeping San Jose State in Mountain West play

The Boise State men’s basketball team completed a Mountain West regular-season sweep of San Jose State on Saturday with an 84-69 win at ExtraMile Arena.

The Broncos, who also routed the Spartans in January, shot 55 percent from the floor (30 of 55) while holding San Jose State to 43 percent overall and 17 percent (4 of 23) from beyond the arc.

“Credit to our guys,” Boise State head coach Leon Rice said. “It’s a fine line because I’m kind of a nose to the grindstone, let’s keep getting better in practice. We practiced pretty dang hard for two days because we’ve got a lot of goals still in sight that we want to get to, and the way you get better is you do it on the practice floor.”

Junior center Drew Fielder continued his strong play for Boise State (16-11, 8-8) with 20 points, five rebounds, two assists and two blocks.

Adrian Myers led San Jose State (7-20, 2-14) with 23 points and eight rebounds while Colby Garland added 22 points and five assists.

The shorthanded Spartans used just seven players while Melvin Bell Jr., Sadraque NgaNga, Garland and Myers played all 40 minutes.

Here are the highlights from Rice’s postgame comments.

On strong start, second-half surge

“I think we were ready to go, we started good, and then there was a little bit of heavy-leggedness from the couple days (of practice) we put in. That’s understandable. And our bench has been giving us such a good lift, that seemed a little flatter than usual tonight. But, that’s how college basketball is. You’re not going to go (on a 17-0 run), then another (run). I mean, this isn’t little-kid basketball. Those are good players and a good coach. … But we weathered the storm.”

On improved three-point defense

“The thing that we were emphasizing is they were coming off a game where they made 15 threes. They didn’t make any threes in the second half until the very last one when the game was done.

“The simplest change is trying harder. That’s ultimately (it) … because if you’re not just so mad if someone makes a three on you, then you’re not trying hard enough. And if they make one and you’ve done everything right and you’ve contested the heck out of it, so be it. But we guarded that three-point line pretty effectively tonight. You could tell even when guys were open at the rim, they didn’t want to take that. They wanted to get another three, because that’s how they win games.”