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This Day In Sports…February 26, 2004:
Boise State kicks off a key WAC road trip by racking up its biggest margin of victory in a road game in school history, routing SMU 89-50 in Dallas. The Broncos had shot 2-for-27 from three-point range 26 days earlier in a 61-59 win over the Mustangs in the Pavilion—on this night, they drilled 15 treys in 24 attempts. The romp came in the middle of a seven-game winning streak, a late-season run that would land Boise State in the NIT. That team had talent, including Aaron Haynes, Jermaine Blackburn, Bryan Defares, and a true freshman named Coby Karl.
The first NIT game was at home against UNLV, when the Rebels were still a thing—winning 20 games and packing out the Thomas & Mack Center. The Broncos beat UNLV 84-69 and earned another host spot in the second round against Wisconsin-Milwaukee. But a Metallica concert was already booked in the BSU Pavilion, and athletic director Gene Bleymaier hastily arranged for the game to be played in Nampa at the Idaho Center. In front of a crowd of more than 10,000, Boise State edged UWM and coach Bruce Pearl 73-70.
The NIT run ended at Marquette in a 66-53 defeat. That 23-10 season was one of two highlight campaigns for Greg Graham, who coached Boise State for eight years and was fired in 2010 (replaced by Leon Rice). The other came in 2007-08, when Boise State won the WAC Tournament in a 107-102 triple-overtime thriller and went to the NCAA Tournament, finishing the season 25-9.
By the way, Boise State has had a larger margin of victory in a conference game away from ExtraMile Arena. It was in a 106-54 walloping of San Jose State on New Year’s Eve, 2020 (that date should be a clue). The game was played in a little gym in Phoenix called Ability 360, with no fans and no media allowed in the building due to COVID restrictions.
So, two days later the Broncos and Spartans faced off again at Grand Canyon University, again in an empty arena. Fresh off that 52-point annihilation of San Jose State, we wondered if Boise State could beat the Spartans by 30 or 40 points the second time around. Then after the game started, it was…by 20 points? How about 10 points? In the final minutes it became: would the Broncos even win? They did, 87-86.
(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.)
