What Boise State’s Javan Buchanan, Leon Rice said after shocking Mountain West Tournament loss to San Jose State

The Boise State men’s basketball team no-showed at the Mountain West Tournament and suffered an 84-74 loss to San Jose State in Wednesday’s opening round at Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.

“Credit to San Jose,” Broncos head coach Leon Rice said. “They out-competed us … just out-fought us.”

In what was likely his final college game, Javan Buchanan put up 28 points and 13 rebounds for the sixth-seeded Broncos (20-12).

No. 11 San Jose State (9-23) will face No. 3 New Mexico (22-9) in Thursday’s quarterfinals.

Here are the highlights from Boise State’s postgame press conference.

Rice on roller coaster season

“It’s been unpredictable, and that makes it the hardest because the way we’ve been playing recently has been amazing. Five wins in a row in tough circumstances. These guys always responded, they did, but I’ve never had a team that could play at the two complete extremes … and it started the first game of the season.

“We had a great scrimmage with Washington, felt good about ourselves. Then a week later (we lost to Division II Hawaii Pacific), and that kind of sums that up a little bit. That doesn’t sit well with me, doesn’t sit well with the fans, doesn’t sit well with the people around the program. It’s not going to happen again. You’ve got to have a team full of dogs that fight. And these guys fought, I’m not going to say that about tonight … but I’ve never had a team that had so many swings.”

On roster management, potential postseason tournament

“This program deserves more and it deserves talks. I mean, we’ve had dogs. And the people that came before them have built this, and they were hungry, tough. And I’ll get a lot of texts from them because they follow us and they’re proud of the way we compete. That’s kind of what our teams have always been known for. … I’m not trying to pile on them, but when it’s this much swings, that can’t happen and our program doesn’t have that.

“We’re going to go out and get some dogs. We’re hunting for ‘em. This doesn’t sit well with any of us. That’s our mission, and that’s all I care about right now. I don’t care about any postseason. We’re not into consolation prizes at Boise State, so I don’t care about that. My focus is on I want guys who want to wear the blue and orange with such pride, and we’ve always had that. And that’s what I’m going to go get this offseason, the toughest guys and the guys that will compete and guys that will lead and the guys that will just continue to fight.”

Buchanan on season-ending loss

“It’s hard. Nobody likes losing. It’s hard for sure, but we didn’t show up tonight. … They were just tougher than us. I think that was as simple as it gets.”