Colorado State owned the paint and locked down defensively in Thursday’s second-half comeback win over New Mexico

DENVER — New Mexico had no answers for David Roddy on Thursday night. Colorado State’s leading scorer for the season recorded his third 30-point performance of the year, finishing with 31 points and nine rebounds in a 83-68 victory for the Rams. 

Roddy shot 70 percent from the floor against the Lobos (14-of-20) and absolutely owned them around the hoop. On more than one occasion Roddy was able to shake free from his defender for an uncontested dunk. But even when there was a defender in his area, it really didn’t matter much in the end, Roddy found a way to finish. 

In addition to his scoring, the junior from Minnesota was a monster on the glass. His nine rebounds led all players on the floor and he constantly made the Lobos pay with his put-backs. Roddy had four offensive rebounds, a couple of them off of his own misses, so even when UNM had hope that they stopped him for a second, it was often short lived as the 6-foot-6, 255-pound bully was there to quickly erase the misfires with another score. 

It’s a treat watching David Roddy a couple of times per week pic.twitter.com/qLRMxVYoCc

— Justin Michael (@JustinTMichael) February 18, 2022

He didn’t rack up the assists like Isaiah Stevens who led the game with seven, Roddy did have a pair though, one of which was worthy of being a top 10 play on Sports Center. While leading the break Roddy delivered a bounce pass to John Tonje through traffic, resulting in a layup for the Rams. It took guts to try and split the three Lobo defenders that were in between Roddy and Tonje but it was just one of those nights where everything he did seemed to work. Plus he got a chance to show off his passing abilities, which of all of his skills probably gets the least attention nationally. 

David Roddy went full Nikola Jokic against UNM tonight.

31 PTS
9 REB

And this nasty pass: #CSURams @DNVR_Rams pic.twitter.com/k6EwSNMr6F

— RG 📷 (@RyanGreeneDNVR) February 18, 2022

Here are the other takeaways from CSU’s 21st win overall and 11th win of the conference slate. 

Defense travels 

CSU trailed by 2 at halftime (42-40) and for a while it looked like the Lobos may take the Rams down to the wire just 48 hours after upsetting No. 22 Wyoming. The Rams deserve a ton of credit for buckling down defensively and holding UNM to just 31 percent shooting as a team in the second half (8-of-26). 

At one point CSU prevented UNM from scoring from the floor for over seven consecutive minutes. It’s the second game in a row where the Rams have done that. The Lobos only scored 4 points over the final 5:41 as well, so there was no chance of any late-game heroics from UNM’s talented guards. 

Offense doesn’t always come easy on the road, especially in a hostile environment like the Pit. But if you defend at a high level consistently and follow it up with a respectable rebounding effort, more times than not you’re going to end up coming out on top. Scoring 83 points was impressive, holding the second-best offense in the league to 68 points in their own building was the reason that the Rams won this game by 15 though. 

With Thursday’s 83-68 victory the Rams are now 18-0 when they hold opponents under 75 points.  

Put a flag in the paint

The Pit is an iconic arena but Roddy and the Rams went in there and absolutely owned the paint. After outscoring UNM 44-22 in the paint in the win, CSU should have planted a flag under the hoop like a general that just conquered new territory in the heat of battle. 

CSU can fill the floor with dangerous shooters and that’s a big benefit in the modern game. The thing is the Rams also have guards that are awesome at driving into the lane. Roddy is Roddy. And the emergence of James Moors has opened things up even more for CSU down low. As we’ve already covered, offense in general, but particularly 3-point shooting, doesn’t always travel as smoothly as you’d hope. So it’s been nice to see this team be able to consistently score around the hoop during the winning streak. 

Sharing is caring

As a team the Rams recorded 16 assists on Thursday. So far this season the Rams are 13-1 when they finish with 15 or more assists, which makes sense because it means that CSU was sharing the basketball, looking for quality looks and then capitalizing on those chances. That was definitely the case against the Lobos and Isaiah Stevens deserves the lion’s share of the credit for his leading role as the facilitator at point guard. 

With a team-leading seven assists against UNM, Stevens now has 11 games with five or more assists in 2021-22. In those games CSU is 10-1, with the only blemish coming on the road at Wyoming. 

He doesn’t get the same attention as Roddy does but Stevens has legitimately been one of the best point guards in the country this season. His ability to create all over the floor is a lost art in an era where point guards are often nothing more than 3-point specialists. And with two more steals against UNM, his season total of 32 is already a career-best with four regular season games and the entire postseason still on the slate. 

There were very few holes in his game to begin with and it’s why he broke out onto the scene as a true freshman, ultimately winning Mountain West Freshman of the Year in 2019-20. But at this stage of his career Stevens is as complete of a player as there is in college basketball. Watching him run the floor is a treat for those that appreciate a less self-centered approach. 

Good karma is always the move

This last one has nothing to do with the game itself. Instead we’re going to take a look at the different pre-game media strategies from Wyoming and CSU with their respective games at New Mexico this week.

The No. 22 Cowboys, shortly after cracking the AP Poll for the first time since 2015, decided to post a video of UNM’s infamous super fan, Snake, telling the Wyoming players that he could not wait to storm the court on them. The video was captioned with “bring it” and that obviously didn’t age very well with the Lobos pulling the upset. After a couple of snarky Twitter replies the video was quickly taken down postgame by Wyoming’s social team.

Wyoming posted & later deleted this tweet after being upset by New Mexico pic.twitter.com/79ai5eSGk7

— DNVR Rams (@DNVR_Rams) February 16, 2022

CSU went with a different approach for their Snake content. Men’s head basketball coach Niko Medved posted a photo posing with him and tweeted out a joking plea for the rowdy hoops aficionado to take it easy on them.

I don’t think anyone truly believes that basketball games are in any way impacted by what is posted on Twitter. That said, it’s a good lesson for us all. When you have a chance to establish good karma, that’s always the right move. I’d like to think the “basketball gods” appreciated Medved paying homage to the best fan in the game.