Presented by HARMON TRAVEL.
This Day In Sports…March 5, 2011, 15 years ago today:
After 10 years in the league, Boise State plays its final men’s basketball conference game in the WAC, beating San Jose State, 66-51. It was the Taco Bell Arena finale for seven seniors, including All-WAC guard La’Shard Anderson and one of the school’s top all-time three-point shooters, Paul Noonan. Fittingly, the final basket of the night was a Noonan three. The Broncos capped their first regular season under coach Leon Rice with a seven-game winning streak to secure the No. 2 seed in the WAC Tournament the following week.
Boise State, rejuvenated under Rice, had started the season strong, with two of their losses coming by three points at No. 20 UNLV and by two at Utah. In the postseason, the Broncos would win their WAC Tournament semifinal over New Mexico State before falling to Utah State in the championship game. Boise State then earned a berth in the College Basketball Invitational, defeating Austin Peay and Evansville at home and losing at Oregon in the CBI semifinals. They finished the season 22-13, the program’s first 20-win season since the run to the NCAA Tournament in 2008.
Going into the CBI, Rice talked about selling hoops in a football-crazy town (Kellen Moore had just finished his junior season on the blue turf). Rice said that football was one of the main reasons he came to Boise State after his long tenure as an assistant at Gonzaga, knowing the school was eager to replicate that success in basketball. And he wanted the CBI to be the start. “We’ve got seven seniors and we want them to have this opportunity,” said Rice. “But it’s also important to propel this program into the future. This could be their legacy, the start of a new program.”
One of Rice’s tasks when he arrived was to help rebuild home attendance after it had bottomed out the season before with an average of just 3,061 per game, a record low for the 28-year-old facility now known as ExtraMile Arena. It was a key factor in the dismissal of coach Greg Graham following the 2009-10 campaign. The fan count bounced back to 4,593 per game in Rice’s first season, peaking at 12,193 for a February win over Idaho. And Bronco Nation was looking forward to the Mountain West and home games versus perennial powers San Diego State, New Mexico and UNLV.
Now another such landmark has passed, as the 86-77 win over the Aztecs Tuesday night was the Boise State’s final home men’s basketball game as a Mountain West school. Next winter, Pac-12 hoops will be even stronger, with a home game built in against Gonzaga, a team that the Broncos haven’t played—home or away—in more than 25 years.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
