CSU’S STOCK SOARING WITH RODDY, STEVENS
It’s more than those two-hand slams off the baseline. Or that trey from the corner with 3:53 left Wednesday night, one of the last words in a CSU statement game.
David Roddy doesn’t just bash you with hammers. The Rams standout can kill you slowly with paper cuts, from anywhere on the floor. Court vision. Cross-court passes. Fast fingers. Tips. Blocks. Heads-up plays. Winning plays.
If you want to know why Roddy’s in the running, as a sophomore, for Mountain West Conference Men’s Basketball Player of the Year, go to the highlight reel.
If you want to know why his Rams (12-3, 9-2 league) can claim a share of first place with a win over Boise State (13-2, 9-1) on Friday at Moby Arena, we’d refer you to the first play of the second half of Wednesday night’s rout of the ballyhooed Broncos.
The one in which the 6-foot-5 Roddy got a paw in to swat a shot by Boise guard Marcus Shaver Jr.
Another heads-up play. Another winning play.
“I think it was a backdoor cut or a hand-off,” recalled Roddy, who shredded the Broncos for 27 points and 15 boards to lift CSU to a seventh win in nine January games. “(We) started the second half strong, had to keep playing good defense those first four minutes. That’s what we really focus on.”
They’re growing up fast, these
Rams.
An expected contender for the 2022 Mountain West crown is turning a corner right now, with Roddy (16.0 points, 9.7 rebounds, 2.7 assists per game) and classmate and point guard Isaiah Stevens (15.4 points, 6.5 assists per game) already pushing for allleague honors during their second full seasons in FoCo.
CSU (NCAA NET ranking: 40) has pocketed road wins in recent weeks at San Diego State (NET ranking: 30) and Utah State (NET ranking: 55). A two-game home sweep of the Broncos (NET ranking: 24) would be huge for CSU’s NCAA chances. The NET is one of the major criterion used by the NCAA Tournament selection
committee in determining bids and seeding.
“We definitely like the NCAA Tournament recognition, but the season is far from over,” Stevens said. “We still have a lot of work to (get) done. The minute we start overlooking teams (is) the minute that we start to fall behind a little bit.”
If Roddy doesn’t take home the honors as the Mountain West’s top player, then Stevens, who dropped 12 points and 10 assists on Boise on Wednesday, just might. Only one CSU player has even been selected as the conference’s player of year, guard Gian Clavell in 2017. No sophomore has won the award since San Diego State’s Jamaal Franklin in 2012.
“He’s a great player,” Broncos coach Leon Rice said of Roddy. “He can shoot it outside, he’s a great rebounder, he’s tough around the basket, a good passer. Just a really good basketball player. He handed us our hats (Wednesday).”
The challenge Friday? Do it again against a salty Boise roster that hasn’t dropped two games in a row since Jan. 11-15, 2020.
“The biggest thing that we’ve done this year is just kind of block out the noise and keep playing hard,” Roddy said. “The sky’s the limit for this team.”