What Boise State’s Leon Rice said about blowout loss to Nevada in Mountain West opener

Wolf Pack takes down Broncos, 81-66

Boise State's Javan Buchanan. | Boise State Athletics

The Boise State men’s basketball team opened Mountain West play on Saturday with a disappointing 81-66 road loss to Nevada at Lawlor Events Center. 

The teams combined to shoot 65 free throws with Nevada (9-3, 1-0) going 27 of 34 from the foul line while the Broncos (8-4, 0-1) finished 19 of 31. 

“There were a lot of fouls called, but we didn’t capitalize on that,” Boise State head coach Leon Rice said. “We left 16 points at the free throw line. So even if we didn’t do anything else better, we would’ve had a chance to be in that game, create some game pressure, if we just make our free throws … and that’s uncharacteristic of us.” 

Boise State had held three straight opponents to 68 or fewer points but surrendered 81 against Nevada, matching a season-worst. N.C. State also scored 81 points on the Broncos at the Maui Invitational. 

Tayshawn Comer paced the Wolf Pack with 24 points and four assists. 

Andrew Meadow had 16 points to lead the Boise State attack. Bench players Dominic Parolin (13 points, 10 rebounds) and Spencer Ahrens (11 points) also had solid games. 

Here are the highlights from Rice’s postgame comments.

On the loss

“We’ve had a tough run, no doubt. But the crazy thing about basketball, we had two of our best practices of the year coming in here, and it just seemed like we were ready to go. But the bottom line is coach (Steve) Alford knows us and he knows that we’re a physical team. He got his team ready to go as far as the physicality of the game. They were really physical, and they were the aggressor. Their technique was a little better.

“When you’re the more physical team, usually you’ve got to come out and hit first. And they did that, they came out and hit us first. And our response was bad technique. We just fouled a lot.”

On bench production, struggling starters 

“Dom was terrific, he battled, his consistency. He had 10 rebounds, 13 points. He was 11 for 14 from the line. He was great. (Ahrens did some really good things out there. … But we had a lot of guys that looked a step slow, all that stuff. They were quicker to the ball than us.”

On strong Nevada effort 

“We got their best shot. They’ve been trending in the right direction. They had four straight wins (coming into Saturday), they’ve kind of settled in a little bit more to their lineup and their roles, and they did a great job. You’ve got to credit Nevada. They took the fight to us, they were the aggressor. They were just the tougher team, period.”