A disastrous three days for Boise State athletics

Boise State fans have mostly lived a charmed life during the 21st Century with sustained success in football and men’s basketball.

But over a three-day stretch from last Saturday to Monday, Boise State’s top two programs each suffered among their worst losses in recent memory.

The Broncos dropped their third straight game in the Milk Can Trophy rivalry series with Fresno State in a non-competitive 30-7 defeat at Albertsons Stadium. It was Spencer Danielson’s first loss to a Mountain West team as head coach.

About 52 hours later, head coach Leon Rice and the Boise State men’s basketball team suffered an unthinkable 79-78 season-opening home loss to Division II Hawaii Pacific.

Saturday’s result on the Blue, which snapped a 16-game winning streak at Albertsons Stadium, likely knocked the Broncos out of College Football Playoff contention. Boise State (6-3, 4-1) is also in danger of missing out on a third straight trip to the MWC championship game with an upcoming road matchup against league-leading San Diego State (7-1, 4-0).

Boise State's Malik Sherrod. | Boise State Athletics

Fresno State (6-3, 3-2) holds the tiebreaker with the Broncos while Hawaii (6-3, 3-2) and New Mexico (6-3, 3-2) are just one game behind Boise State in the MWC standings.

To make matters worse, the Broncos could be without starting quarterback Maddux Madsen for an extended period of time. Madsen suffered a lower right leg injury on the third series of the Fresno State game and emerged from the locker room on crutches with a boot.

After the game, Danielson said Madsen could be out “a while.” Danielson also apologized to the fans for the listless performance against rival Fresno State.

“I take full responsibility,” Danielson said. “We got our tails kicked today on The Blue at home, and that’s unacceptable. We’ve got to look at it and see why that happened. … That’s not who we are.”

Fresno State smothered Boise State’s offense, holding the Broncos to 193 total yards with three turnovers. It was the fewest number of points Boise State has ever scored in a MWC game, breaking the previous record of 13 during a 2018 home loss to the Aztecs.

The Broncos have been held to seven points in all three losses this season.

On the men’s basketball front, Boise State entered the 2025-26 season with lofty aspirations. The Broncos were picked to finish third in the preseason MWC poll after adding star transfers Dylan Andrews (UCLA) and Drew Fielder (Georgetown) to a solid returning core of Javan Buchanan, Pearson Carmichael and Andrew Meadow, among others.

Final#BleedBlue x #UnbreakableCulture x @bankfirstfed pic.twitter.com/pTpwENv5zc
— Boise State MBB (@BroncoSportsMBB) November 4, 2025

Defensive lapses and poor three-point shooting kept Boise State out of the NCAA Tournament last season, and the same issues resurfaced on Monday against Hawaii Pacific.

The Broncos shot just 10 of 33 (30.3 percent) from long range while the Sharks made 49.2 percent of their field goal attempts en route to 79 points.

“We let them get comfortable and we let them make threes and we let them do what they wanted to do to take the game to us,” Rice said after the loss. “Then we played desperate.”

It was Boise State’s first loss to a non-Division I opponent in 30 years (Lewis-Clark State, 1995).

As a Division II school, Hawaii Pacific’s stunning victory over the Broncos will not show up in the NCAA NET Rankings or KenPom. But the NCAA Tournament selection committee will undoubtedly take the result into consideration on Selection Sunday.

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