Following a 68-57 loss to Wyoming in Laramie on Jan. 31, the Colorado State men’s basketball team found itself at 12-10 overall and 3-8 in the Mountain West Conference.
The Rams were much closer to the bottom of the league standings than they were to the top. But they found a spark and ran off eight straight victories before losing their regular-season finale Saturday to Boise State at Moby Arena.
They finished the season 20-11 and 11-9 in league play, giving head coach Ali Farokhmanesh a 20-win campaign in his first season at the helm and giving the team the confidence boost it needed heading into this week’s Mountain West tournament.
CSU is the No. 7 seed and will open the tournament Wednesday at 7 p.m. against No. 10 Fresno State at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas.
Farokhmanesh has seen his team respond to adversity all season and expects that to be no different in the tournament, which the Rams won last year after a similar finish to the regular season.
The first step is bouncing back following Saturday’s loss, which snapped their long winning streak.
“They’ve shown that,” Farokhmanesh said. “I think that’s on me, too; that’s on our staff to get them back up, to realize, hey, there were a lot of things that were in our control (against Boise State). It wasn’t like they just made a bunch of shots. We missed some shots. It was more like if we would have executed this a little better, if we would have stayed in the fight longer, if we would have just hit more on box-outs.
“Those things are controllable. So, it makes it feel worse in some ways that you had more control, but it also gives you confidence in knowing like, hey, these are fixable things that you have done before. Now it’s just getting back to the right mindset of where we need to be.”
CSU was without big man Rashaan Mbemba for much of nonconference play, as well as Kyle Jorgensen for several games after he was injured in the Rams’ conference opener against Utah State.
Those two have been back, but the Rams have played the past few games without sharpshooter Josh Pascarelli. Farokhmanesh said Saturday he isn’t sure if Pascarelli will be available for the tournament.
During the team’s eight-game winning streak, they defeated tournament No. 2 seed San Diego State at home and No. 3 seed New Mexico at The Pit in Albuquerque.
They also avenged a loss to Fresno State, the team they will open the tournament against, at home Feb. 24.
“They’re an interesting matchup for us because they have a big big, kind of a plodder in the paint,” Farokhmanesh said. “Then they really just play four guards out there. They’re a little more Wyoming-esque in some ways. So, they present a lot of challenges in terms of how they space and how they move it. I love the way they play basketball. It’s going to be a tough matchup. They’ve not been an easy out for anybody.”
Last year, the Rams took a seven-game winning streak into the tournament. After a bye in the first round, they defeated Nevada, Utah State and Boise State in consecutive days to claim the championship and the league’s automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament.
Farokhmanesh sees similarities in last year’s situation to this year’s and hopes his players can trust each other enough to tackle the task of winning four games in four days and hoisting the tournament trophy for the second year in a row. This will be CSU’s last Mountain West tournament before they join the Pac-12 next season.
“I think it’s just trusting who you do,” Farokhmanesh said. “It’s not about tricking anybody, running a special play or doing a special defensive scheme at this point. There’s some adjustments you’ve got to make. It’s just, can you do what you do better than what they can do and trust each other throughout that process and take care of yourself. I think that’s the biggest thing.”
CSU enters the tournament featuring four players averaging in double-figures, only one of whom was on last year’s team. Brandon Rechsteiner leads the team with 12.3 points per game. Jorgensen averages 12.1, Pascarelli 10.8 and Carey Booth 10.6.
On Tuesday, the Rams’ lone senior, Jevin Muniz, was named to the All-Mountain West third team while Rechsteiner earned honorable mention.
In conference play, Muniz averaged 10.3 points, 4.9 assists and 3.7 rebounds. He led the Mountain West in assists. In addition to his 12.6 points per game, Rechsteiner made 2.45 3-pointers per game at a rate of 38.9%. The junior reached double-figures in scoring in 14 of the 20 conference games and had 15 or more points six times.
Jorgensen said this year’s run could be similar to last year’s, even though the team has to win one more game than it did a year ago.
“It’s a lot similar,” he said after the loss to Boise State. “Obviously you can dwell on games like this. You can be upset. But at the end of the day, you have to move on. Now it’s do-or-die. After every game, you just have to reset. You just have to focus toward whoever’s next.
“I think that’s what we’ve done a great job of over the past month is just, no matter what the game, no matter how high the emotions of the game were, we’ve reset. So, I think, we’ve set ourselves up well.”
If the Rams get past Fresno State, they will face No. 2 San Diego State in the quarterfinals.
