Colorado State Sweeps Air Force

After nearly a month without playing a basketball game, the CSU Rams hosted the struggling Air Force Academy twice in 3 days, taking care of business both times.

After an understandably slow start in their first competitive game since facing Wyoming in Laramie on Feb. 6th, Isaiah Stevens and David Roddy led CSU to a comfortable 72-49 victory over the Falcons in Fort Collins.

The first half was as sloppy of a basketball game as you could imagine. After shaking off some rust, and despite some bad turnovers, the Rams managed to hold a 4 point lead heading into the half, leading 28-24.

While Niko Medved’s boys started off the second half slowly, it quickly turned their favor after realizing it was probably best to feed their two best players the ball. Roddy and Stevens both contributed 19 points, with Thistlewood adding 14 and John Tonje chipping in 11 of his own.

After the Rams started pulling away in the second half, it was hard not to scoreboard watch fellow Mountain West foes SDSU and Boise State while they faced off in a thriller, SDSU eventually pulling out the victory. It’s a good feeling at the end of the year when you’re competing for a conference title, and these two games being played simultaneously both had major implications.

The second game between Air Force and CSU on Monday night proved to be a similarly predictable result. After a first half reminiscent of Saturday, CSU once again pulled away in the second half, outscoring their opponent by 27 points en route to a 30 point, 72-42 victory.

Similar to the first game between the two, Air Force and their Princeton style offense couldn’t muster many baskets against the stout Rams’ defense. It seemed as though CSU learned their lesson from the first game and didn’t wait around this time to feed David Roddy the rock. Roddy finished the night with 22 points and 12 rebounds, in the type of performance we’ve come to expect from the Sophomore big man. Stop me if I’ve said this before, but Isaiah Stevens followed Roddy’s lead as the second leading scorer of the night, with 15 points of his own on 4 of 9 from the field. Kendall Moore chipped in 10 points, albeit while struggling mightily from the 3 point line, going 0-9 on the night. In fact Colorado State shot poorly overall from beyond the arc, going just 5-28 (17.9%). Obviously it didn’t matter much in the outcome of the game, but the Rams’ will certainly want to improve that number if they are hoping to make some noise in the latter part of the year.

March is finally upon us, which means the college basketball season is finally ramping up. Four teams in the Mountain West have NCAA tournament aspirations, and I can feel we are about to get some fantastic basketball down the stretch.

Colorado State has two regular season match-ups remaining against the Lobos from New Mexico and the Wolfpack from Nevada. The rescheduling of these games from previous cancellations isn’t doing the Rams any favors, as Friday against Nevada will mark their third game in 5 days. Nonetheless, it sure is nice to see Nico Medved and his team playing again.

There’s nothing quite like college basketball in March.

Next game: UNM @ CSU, 6:00pm MST, Moby Arena, Fort Collins, CO