An 84-78 victory on the road Saturday against Northern Iowa to open the season has Colorado State men’s basketball coach Larry Eustachy focused on the season ahead, with no time to linger on past disappointments.
With the victory against a 2015 NCAA Tournament team in the books, the Rams are looking ahead to Thursday night’s home opener against Loyola Marymount at 7 p.m. at Moby Arena.
But even with the impressive start, Eustachy wasn’t ready to predict anything for the season.
“I don’t know this team yet,” Eustachy said after Tuesday’s practice. “I know we’re going to hit some hard times with the difficulty of the nonconference schedule we have. It’s hard to answer right now how good we might be with the schedule we have. It will help us figure out how good we are.”
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Eustachy isn’t dwelling on last season, when the Rams were at home watching the NCAA Tournament despite a 27-7 overall record and a 13-5 mark in the Mountain West.
“We’ve moved on, and we’re just going to keep going,” Eustachy said.
He does look back at last season long enough to point out the difficulty of replacing J.J. Avila (16.7 points per game), Stanton Kidd (11.6) and Daniel Bejarano (11.4).
Eustachy is looking for senior leadership from 6-foot-7 forward Tiel Daniels, 6-4 guard Gian Clavell, 6-6 guard Joe De Ciman, and 6-2 guard Antwon Scott to guide this team.
Looking ahead to conference play, Eustachy expects strong showings from San Diego State, Boise State and UNLV. He thinks the Rams could be right behind the top group.
“We’re going to be a good team,” Eustachy said. “Great teams make the NCAA Tournament. We’re not a great team yet.”
Irv Moss: 303-954-1296, imoss@denverpost.com or @irvmoss
