Heartbreak in Sin City — Rams reflect after going broke on Day 1 of the Mountain West Tournament

LAS VEGAS — The epitome of brutality.

Colorado State men’s basketball had high hopes coming into the Mountain West Tournament.

Even after failing to clinch a bye in the opening round, the No. 6 Rams felt like they were in good position to make a nice little run at the postseason. Unfortunately, though, the No. 11 Wyoming Cowboys had different plans.

The Pokes, led by Kwane Marble III, played spoilers to the Rams’ Sin City plans, upsetting CSU 80-74 at the Thomas and Mack Center on Wednesday night.

Marble, who only averaged 7.3 points per game and shot 33 percent from 3-point range in 2019-20, was consistently a matchup issue for CSU’s bigs around the perimeter. The Denver native finished 7-of-12 from the floor, including a game-high four made 3’s on the night.

Along with Marble, Jake Hendricks (16), Trevon Taylor (15), Hunter Maldonado (13) and AJ Banks (10) all finished the night in double-digit figures. These five players accounted for essentially all of Wyoming’s production and made it extremely difficult on the Rams by sharing the rock and not trying to play hero ball.

The Rams likely could have survived a scoring surge from any one or two of these individuals — but with role guys like Banks, Marble and Taylor all contributing big-time points — CSU did not make enough buckets on the other end to offset Wyoming’s red-hot offense.

“I think you should give a lot of credit to Wyoming,” CSU head coach Niko Medved said postgame.

“They’ve had a tough season but if you’ve watched them, they’ve just continued to play hard as the season has gone on. Obviously, we were fortunate to win in Laramie but they’ve won at Air Force, and they had Fresno State and Nevada on the ropes and just hadn’t found a way to finish games.”

In Medved’s opinion, any narrative that states CSU underestimated their rivals to the north is incorrect. According to the Rams second-year head coach, the players were locked in during their practices leading up to the matchup and prepared for the Cowboys with great attention to detail.

Instead, Medved said that Wyoming was genuinely just the better team on Wednesday. He emphasized that they did a good job of knocking down shots in rhythm and had the basketball unselfishly popping from player to player on offense. Defensively, Medved felt like his team did not do a great job with rotations and Wyoming’s shooters made them pay for it.

“They did a lot of good things,” Medved said. “They made a lot of shots and moved the ball well.”

Medved continued that he loved that his group never stopped fighting — a characteristic that the Rams have shown all season. However, after going down by as much as 16 in the first half and 13 in the second, Medved said that the Rams just dug themselves too deep of a hole to climb out of.

“We cut it to 2 a couple of times and couldn’t get over the hump,” Medved said. “Too many key turnovers in situations where we had a chance. So, it’s disappointing. Obviously, there is a ton of emotion right now with these guys. I know they’re gutted after this loss but we’ll find a way to get through it.”

For Nico Carvacho, who after five years may have played in his final games in a Rams uniform, the loss to Wyoming was particularly difficult to swallow. After everything that the redshirt senior has been through in his career, though, the 6-foot-11 center was quite eloquent.

Fighting back his emotions, Carvacho sat at the podium and talked about trying to soak in the entire experience of one last conference tournament with his teammates.

“It hasn’t quite hit me yet but I think it’s going to,” Carvacho said.

At this point, Carvacho and the coaches are are still holding onto hope that the Rams will get some form of chance in the postseason. But if for some reason CSU isn’t given that opportunity, the ‘Big Chile’ can rest easy knowing that the Rams gave it everything they had this year.

After being tabbed to finish 9th in the league by the media, CSU out-played just about all preseason expectations and did so with a core of six underclassmen. Moving forward, Carvacho feels that he can be proud of the effort that his squad gave, and knows that this is only the beginning for CSU men’s hoops.

“I’ve been on totally different types of teams and this one was special,” Carvacho said.

Carvacho explained that this group of players had nothing but total love and respect for each other, and that their chemistry off the court was incredible. There were never any disagreements or inflated egos causing troubles in the locker room — just a group of guys that genuinely loved being together.

“I love this team, I love this group of guys and I love what they’ve done. They’ve connected like crazy,” Medved said.

“I mean, you have to take the good with the bad. It’s been a great season. Today was a tough day. There’s no question about that. But that doesn’t change anything about these guys, who they are as people and how they performed this year.”