Broncos determined to come up big once again
Editor’s note: This is the eighth in an 11-part series previewing UNM men’s basketball opponents for this season. The series runs in reverse order of the Mountain West preseason media poll and concludes with a nonconference schedule preview.
Leon Rice woke up at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, Nev., for the recent Mountain West men’s basketball preseason media summit and it hit him.
As he was struggling to figure out how to turn on the lights in his room — “I was hitting buttons and the curtains were opening,” he said — it dawned on him that he is the dean of coaches in a league his team just joined seven season prior.
Though he’s just 54, no other Mountain West coach has been running their program longer. And, as such, Rice has sort of figured some things out about the league that maybe the others haven’t yet.
Not since their debut in the league (2011-12) when the Broncos went 3-11, has a Rice-coached team had a sub-.500 record in conference games. In the past six seasons, Boise State has a cochampionship, two second-place finishes, a third, a fourth and a fifth-place finish and has played in the NCAA Tournament twice, both times as an at-large selection.
So, maybe it’s not that surprising that, despite losing last season’s MWC Media Player of the Year Chandler Hutchison, who was drafted by the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, and other key players, Rice’s Broncos are still picked to finish fourth in the league by media.
“That does make you feel good,” Rice said. “But I also want our guys to have a chip on their shoulder. We didn’t sign up to be fourth. They didn’t come to Boise to be fourth. We’re going to battle, and I know we’ve got big tasks ahead of us.”
As the league, and college basketball as a whole, seems to be moving away from the traditional big man, the Broncos hope to gain their advantage with size.
Sitting on either side of Rice at the Oct. 16 media conference were 6-foot-11, 240-pound senior Zach Haney and 6-10, 235-pound fifthyear senior David Wacker. Rice said he brought them with him to Las Vegas to give them a day off from banging on each other in practice — something the two hope to do to smaller opposing teams.
“Zach and I can really be a problem for teams,” said Wacker. “We see a lot of other teams leaning toward going really small. That’s kind of where the game is going. So being able to still have low-post threats and being able to play that way, it’s still going to be one of our strengths — our versatility as a team being able to do different things.”
Of course, one of the best shooters in the conference, Justinian Jessup, should keep defenses honest and discourage them from packing the paint, too.
Jessup hit 87 3-pointers as a sophomore last season, and getting him open looks will be a focal point offensively. Helping Rice figure out the best way to do that will be Tim Duryea, the offensiveminded former Utah State head coach who was fired in March and joined the Broncos staff in the offseason.