What Leon Rice said about Boise State’s ferocious comeback, heartbreaking triple overtime loss to San Diego State

In a Mountain West men’s basketball game for the ages, San Diego State survived a triple overtime marathon against Boise State on Saturday at Viejas Arena.

The Aztecs, who led 50-29 at halftime, shook off a dismal final 20 minutes of regulation to defeat the Broncos, 110-107.

Boise State roared back from a 24-point first-half deficit to force overtime and held a 98-93 advantage with 18 seconds remaining. Three-pointers by Elzie Harrington and BJ Davis sandwiched a Broncos turnover to tie the game at 93 after one overtime period.

San Diego State then scored the first five points of double-overtime, but Boise State rallied back to force another five minutes of action.

Andrew Meadow’s game-tying three-point attempt at the end of triple-overtime was off the mark. The Broncos led by five points in the final OT period but didn’t make a field goal in the final four-plus minutes of play.

Boise State head coach Leon Rice praised the team’s fight while lamenting the poor opening half.

“We can’t have those Jekyll and Hyde moments,” Rice said. “If we played two halves like (the first half), think of what the score would be. We don’t dwell on the losses and you’ve got to move on … but you don’t have to feel that way. We’ll keep making changes and we’ll keep adjusting and we’ll get everybody playing to that level of toughness, because we had a lot of guys do some great things tonight. They certainly deserved to get it done, and it should’ve been done.”

Javan Buchanan paced the Broncos (9-5, 1-2) with a season-high 29 points, going 10 for 13 from the field. Buchanan also had five rebounds and six assists.

Meadow finished with 25 points, three rebounds and three steals.

Davis had a strong game for the Aztecs (9-4, 3-0) with 22 points, 10 rebounds, six assists and four steals. Harrington added 20 points.

Here are the highlights from Rice’s postgame comments.

On overtime periods

“We just wanted to stay on the attack. Our guys got tired. (Aginaldo Neto fouling out) really hurt because he’s an offensive weapon. I think we got a little tired and settled for some tough threes. … Now, every time you drove you got karate chopped, so I get what they got tired of. That’s where you have to keep driving at them when they’re in the double bonus.”

On bouncing back

“We’re going to find out our real toughness … because these guys are devastated in there. We’ve got to build it back up and get back. We’re playing a tough Grand Canyon team (on Wednesday) that has a lot of great athletes. If we’re not tough for 40 minutes … we’ve got to be able to get this off of us and go.”