LARAMIE — Never a doubt, right?
With a smile on his face, Kris Martin stood in the hallways of Arena Auditorium and talked about how despite trailing by 19 in the second half, the Rams never believed they were out of the game.
“We knew we would fight back and (give) ourselves an opportunity to make some big plays, and that’s what we did,” Martin said postgame.
Martin talked about the grittiness of his teammates and his own personal hard work in the gym.
At a practice earlier this week, the senior was raining 3’s from a variety of positions around the arc. Basic shooting drills aren’t normally very noteworthy but Martin was so smooth and confident with his release that it seemed worth jotting down at the time — especially because he made more than 10 in a row at one point.
The hard work in practice this week clearly paid off as Martin drilled a go-ahead 3-pointer with 39 seconds to go and followed it up by sinking four consecutive free throws to ice the game for the Rams on Saturday (77-70).
“For me, personally, I work on my game every day. I shoot the ball every day so making those big shots is not a surprise to me,” Martin said. “It may be (a surprise) to other people but it’s something that I do every day.”
When the comeback was complete and the final score read 77-70 in favor of the guys in green, Martin’s statline was 13 points on 3-of-7 attempts from the floor. After experiencing last season’s road loss to Cowboys firsthand, the senior was simply relieved to not have to relive the same nightmare again.
“I remember going into that last media timeout when we were down 8 — it was just going through my mind — like no way, we can’t let it happen again so we finna give it everything we’ve got over these last 2 minutes, 30 seconds,” Martin said. “It would have killed us if we would have went home with a loss to Wyoming.”
For Martin, this season has had its ups and downs. After earning a starting role in the summer, Martin was moved to the bench against Tulsa on Dec. 21 and replaced by David Roddy.
Ultimately the move has been good for the Rams as a whole. Since moving Martin to the bench and Roddy into the starting rotation, the Rams have gone 11-4 over the last 15 games.
Honestly, the move has even been good for Martin too. Coming into the season, we all assumed Martin would be in the starting lineup because he’s one of the most experienced players on the roster. Throughout his CSU career, though, Martin has always seemed to play better as a sixth man. It’s not that Martin has played poorly as a starter but his impact has just been greater as a ‘3 and D’ guy off the bench.
There’s no shame in this role. Every good basketball team has a couple of glue guys that they can turn to in various situations throughout the game.
Even so, as a human, it would have been easy to understand if Martin would have been discouraged by getting taken out of the starting five — even if it was so that a beast like Roddy could get more minutes and ultimately help the team. We all have egos and want to shine.
But if Martin has been upset at all, the senior from Frisco, Texas, hasn’t showed it once. Martin has consistently been upbeat and encouraging around his his teammates — and whenever his number gets called on by the coaches, he goes out and plays both ends with great intensity. More or less, Martin has been the perfect teammate for a squad full of young hoopsters on the rise.
Really, that’s what makes Martin’s moment in the spotlight so special. After continually doing the right things over and over again, Medved knew that he could count on the veteran to play crucial minutes down the stretch. And when the game was truly on the line, Martin responded by scoring 10 points over the final 5 minutes to help secure his first-ever win in ‘Laradise’ and CSU’s first sweep over the Pokes since 2016-17.
“Coach talked to us at halftime and he was like, ‘this is going to show us what type of team we really are.’ We went down big and showed that we can fight and we can come back from anything,” Martin said. “I think it was a big win for us.”
Along with local bragging rights, the road win helps CSU keep pace with the other contending teams in the league. With five total teams gunning for the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds behind San Diego State, a loss to the lowly Cowboys would have been devastating to the Rams’ chances of finishing in the top 3.
Thanks to Martin’s clutch shooting, though, as of Saturday night the Rams remain tied with Boise State and Nevada for third in the Mountain West.
