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Wednesday Weekly…May 7, 2025.

It’s a bit premature, of course, but left tackle Kage Casey’s NFL Draft stock is high as he enters his fourth season as a Boise State starter. Casey’s currently rated as a mid-round pick by various sites that predict such things. He’s a high-character guy, and that goes a long way. The signs were there the first night of his redshirt freshman season. The Broncos had picked up Cade Beresford out of the transfer portal from Washington State in 2022, and he seemed like a natural for left tackle. But in the season opener at Oregon State, it was Casey who lined up at that all-important spot.  All he’s done since then is earn second-team All-Mountain West honors as a sophomore and first-team kudos as a junior. Next April he’s probably going to hear his name called, and the show will go on in the NFL.

Tight end Matt Lauter is on the way-too-early bubble, but you wonder how much the “draftologists” have been paying attention. Lauter set a Broncos tight ends record with 47 catches last season. Yes, more than Derek Schouman, Kyle Efaw, Jake Roh, John Bates, any of them. Lauer covered 619 yards and scored seven touchdowns. Another big season gets him in the draft, I think. And EDGE Jayden Virgin-Morgan is the wild card. A solid season could push him into the conversation after he recorded 10.0 sacks last year—then again, JVM is only a junior-to-be.

THE JEANTY LIFT IN LAS VEGAS

As Ashton Jeanty gets settled in Las Vegas for his first rookie mini-camp with the Raiders starting Friday, we can wonder if he’ll affect the Raiders rushing game the same way he helped that of Boise State when he came in as a true freshman in 2022. Las Vegas averaged a league-worst 3.6 yards per rush in 2024, the first time in franchise history it ranked last in the NFL in that stat. The year before Jeanty came to Boise State, the Broncos averaged a measly 3.1 yards per carry, the lowest number since the team became an FBS school in 1996. The running game was in crisis mode. In Jeanty’s sophomore season, yards per attempt jumped all the way to 5.0, and then to 5.4 in 2023 and a stellar 6.1 last year. Not that the Raiders expect a similar leap, but this is one reason they drafted Jeanty.

BRONCOS WILL LIKE THIS LIST

We’re in the college football offseason, but there’s always material out there, like Jon Wilner’s post-spring football Top 25 in the San Jose Mercury News. Wilner, one of the premiere sportswriters on the West Coast, has Boise State at No. 17. The Broncos are the only Group of 5 team on the list. Wilner’s takes include the return of quarterback Maddux Madsen to help offset the loss of Ashton Jeanty, but he says “another Mountain West title and ticket to the College Football Playoff depend heavily on the Broncos’ success at the line of scrimmage—in particular, filling the void left by Ahmed Hassanein.” Braxton Fely staying the course inside on the line certainly helps. And this notion from Wilner is not unigue: “The Oct. 4 trip to Notre Dame will offer the same opportunity for resume rocket fuel as the thriller at Oregon provided last season.”

THE MOUNTAIN WEST’S PROGRESS

Two weeks minus a day after the NFL Draft, we really haven’t looked at the big picture for the Mountain West. The conference had six players chosen (two of them from Boise State). The MW has been underachieving, and six picks could be seen as more evidence of that. But it was sure better than last year, when only two Mountain West players were chosen (and zero Broncos). In fact, the count in this draft is the highest for the league since 2022, when 11 players were taken. Another way to look at this year’s draft: the top four Mountain West players selected were from schools headed to the Pac-12 next year. The other two were seventh-rounders Kitan Crawford of Nevada and Ricky White of UNLV. (And you never know—the Pac-12 still may find a way to wrestle the Rebels away to be part of the rebuilt conference.)

GEM STATE TALENT

Gooding’s Colston Loveland reached rarified air as an Idahoan, being selected in the first round of the NFL Draft, and the run may continue. Next in line could be Oregon’s Kenyon Sadiq, a tight end like Loveland. He’s a junior-to-be, and (like Loveland) could forego his senior season for the draft. Sadiq was the consensus top prospect in Idaho in 2022, coming out of Skyline High in Idaho Falls. Wilner lists him as the No. 10 draft prospect in the West this year. “No player listed comes as close to attaining freak status as Sadiq, who played a backup role behind Terrance Ferguson but is poised for a breakout season in 2025,” writes Wilner. “He’s 245 pounds but runs like he’s 210, with power and a fluid stride. We expect Sadiq to produce a first-rate season and an absolutely stellar NFL combine.”

WEEKLY PORTAL MOVEMENT

The transfer portal is now closed for college football and basketball. Nobody else can go in, but a lot of players can still come out.  A little catchup along those lines: 247 Sports reports that Arizona EDGE Sterling Lane is transferring to Boise State.  Lane, a 6-3, 240-pounder, logged 26 tackles last season.  He’s the fifth player to join the Broncos’ defensive front out of the portal. And there’s another Australian on the Boise State roster, but this one doesn’t kick—at least that’s not his primary job. Alma Taleni is an offensive lineman who spent last season at Utah and has four years of eligibility remaining. Taleni became a Ute with no American football experience, although he is athletic, having played basketball at various levels in Australia. Taleni was listed on Utah’s website as 6-7, 297 pounds.  

OLD-FASHIONED SIGNEE

On the hoops side, Boise State signed Bhan Buom, who comes from Link Year Academy in Branson, MO. There’s still a lot to learn about Buom, a three-star forward who’s 6-8 but weighs only 180. He’s the No. 12 overall prospect from Missouri, but he didn’t have any power conference offers and sounds like a classic developmental subject for coach Leon Rice’s staff.

KEY PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

Andrew Meadow and Javan Buchanan are still around. There was little doubt that Meadow would be back, as he now becomes a focal point for the Broncos. But Buchanan had us wondering during the Crown tournament when he was a bit noncommittal in an interview with Bob Behler and Abe Jackson. Meadow and Buchanan are Boise State’s top two returning scorers, averaging 12.6 points and 9.6 points per game last season, respectively.  was quiet down the stretch in Mountain West play, but he reminded everybody where he can be when he put up 27 points against Butler in the Crown quarterfinals.

TYSON’S ITINERARY

Boise State’s career scoring leader now ramps up for graduation day on Saturday, and then to L.A. for a week of training. That’s followed by pre-draft workouts for various NBA teams leading up to the NBA Draft on June 25. Tyson Degenhart says he interviewed with 11 different NBA teams at the Portsmouth Invitational in Virginia two weeks ago—and that they all went well. Can’t imagine that they didn’t. He feels he played well in the Portsmouth, averaging 11.7 points in three games and shooting 61 percent from the field and 54 percent from three-point range. That last number kind of dovetails into the way Degenhart finished the season. In his final four games as a Bronco he hit 56 percent from beyond the arc.

BIG FINISHES IN OLYMPIC SPORTS

Well, the Boise State women’s tennis team did it last Friday, taking down No. 22 Baylor 4-3 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Austin. The fact the Broncos lost to Texas 4-0 in the second round on Saturday is beside the point. The win over the Bears was the women’s first in the NCAAs in 15 years. On the men’s side, the Broncos fell 4-1 in the first round in Berkeley to Cal. And the Boise State beach volleyball team’s first-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament ended Friday with a 3-0 loss to third-seeded Stanford. But hey—positive steps for all three programs.

Boise State softball hit the skids during the heart of the Mountain West season, but its sweep of Utah State last weekend earned it the No. 4 seed in the conference tournament. The Broncos turn right around to face the Aggies this afternoon to open tourney play in San Diego. A lot of individual kudos on this team. Newly-named MW Freshman of the Year MaKenzie Butt set a Boise State record against USU with her 20^th home run of the season. Butt holds the team RBI record as well with 76. Also last weekend, All-Mountain West Bronco Sophia Knight became the first Division I softball player in 23 years to record 100 hits in a regular season. 

This Day In Sports…brought to you by HARMON TRAVEL…official sponsor of Boise State athletics.

May 7, 2009: Each revelation in baseball is worse than the last, as Los Angeles Dodgers star Manny Ramirez is suspended for 50 games after testing positive for a female fertility drug. It was the latest black eye for a sport that had been rocked earlier in the year by the admission of steroid use by Alex Rodriguez, adding to a growing list of tainted stars that included Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. Ramirez would retire less than two years later rather than face a 100-game suspension for another positive drug test. Comeback attempts by Ramirez failed in 2012 and 2013.

(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra and anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK. He also served as color commentator on KTVB’s telecasts of Boise State football for 14 seasons.)

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