INDIANAPOLIS — The sweet little miracle that is Colorado State basketball got chewed up and spit out by a maize and blue beast.
Big bad Michigan 75, Sacrificial Rams 63.
“Listen, I told the guys after (the game), they should be disappointed. We came here to win,” coach Niko Medved said Thursday, after CSU was rudely bounced from the NCAA Tournament by a sleeping Big Ten beast that woke up angry when the Rams fooled around and fell in love with an unsustainable reliance on 3-point shooting.
OK, this was a hard-to-watch teaching moment for Medved and a CSU program he rescued from a dumpster filled with toxicity and waste by predecessor Larry Eustachy.
But any college basketball coach in the United States who’s produced the smiles Medved has brought to the Rams since taking a job in 2018 that should’ve required a hazmat suit deserves the keys to Fort Fun as well as a contract extension.
“For us to flip a team from (11-21) to 25-6 in about three or four years is very impressive,” Colorado State forward David Roddy said.
Here’s the nitty-gritty truth, if you can handle it: The wise guys in Las Vegas know more about basketball than the NCAA tourney’s selection committee, which spit out some bad seeds for this game. The Rams, despite drawing a No. 6 seed, were not only two-point underdogs to the eleventh-seeded Wolverines, but up to their elbows in match-up trouble against Hunter Dickinson and Moussa Diabate, Michigan’s beasts in the paint.
You could argue the Rams, who beat St. Mary’s and 24 other foes during a joy ride, brought a better resume to the Big Dance than Michigan. But there’s no question the Wolverines, despite the absence of starting point guard DeVante’ Jones, sidelined by a concussion suffered in practice, were blessed with more blue-chip talent.
Somewhere Boyd Grant and Fum McGraw are smiling about how basketball matters again at CSU, and maybe this story was so good it didn’t deserve such an abrupt end. But more times than not, the elemental basketball truths of size and talent win out at the final buzzer.
With tipoff at brunch hour, the Rams feasted on 3-point shots, taking a 28-13 lead with 5 minutes, 10 seconds remaining in the first half. At that point, CSU should’ve asked the waiter for a check, headed for the team bus and quit while it was ahead.
Medved correctly suspected his team’s 24-0 advantage beyond the 3-point arc in the first half was messing with the basketball gods in a way they would not find amusing. When Colorado State lost its Midas touch, Michigan dragged the Rams down in the muck and won a wrestling match. The maize and blue exposed its teeth, out-rebounding CSU 36-25, while out-scoring the Rams 34-16 in the paint.
“All those things came back to bite us,” Medved said.
At 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds, Roddy isn’t round (or talented) enough to be mistaken for a young Charles Barkley. But only a fool wants to be on the receiving end of the bruises Roddy delivers when he throws his weight around. And NBA scouts have certainly noticed. Roddy projects to be a second-round choice in the 2022 draft. “I think David can play at that level,” Medved said.
But here’s the truth, if Roddy chooses to pay it any heed: When Michigan got nasty and began intimidating CSU at the rim on both ends of the floor, he didn’t step up and do enough to put an end to the Wolverines’ bullying.
Oh, Roddy wasn’t bad. Between his 13 points and six rebounds on his stat sheet, however, there was the uneasy vibe he was too deferential to the Big Ten, a rugged conference where no act of meekness goes unpunished and the timid are left to wonder what might have been.
Has Roddy peeled off his CSU uniform for the last time? Letap hope not. He has a shot to make money in the NBA for a decade. But to ensure that dream turns into a pile of cash to last a lifetime, his game has growing up to do.
While Roddy will feed his brain all the pertinent data points about turning pro, it sounds as the strings on his heart are tugging him to stay with the Rams.
“I can’t wait til the offseason and we’re getting back together and trying to do this again,” Roddy said. “You know, just getting that experience and understanding how hard you have to play in 40 minutes, because thatap the only thing that you’re guaranteed when you get selected (to the NCAA tourney). I think thatap the biggest mission of mine and this team is just to figure out how we can get back here and how we can have more success.”
Quick, can we get a written guarantee before the lure of NBA money tempts Roddy to change his mind? Because if he’s back, I guarantee you this:
The next time CSU is at the Big Dance, Roddy will have the Rams ready to rumble.
