Rams takeaways: The pressure is on for Colorado State after dropping another league game

DENVER — This one is gonna sting for a while. 

Colorado State had multiple opportunities to secure a road win over Wyoming in regulation on Monday night. Missed chances and uncharacteristic mistakes ultimately cost the Rams in a major way, as CSU fell 84-78 in overtime to the Cowboys at Arena Auditorium. 

Playing a major role in the win for Wyoming was senior guard Hunter Maldonado. The former Vista Ridge High School star from Colorado Springs balled out against the Rams, finishing with a career-high 35 points on 12-of-19 shooting. Maldonado was consistently able to get to the hoop in this one, he facilitated for his team with seven assists, and he just generally created offense for Wyoming all the way up until the final buzzer. His stellar day, along with strong 3-point shooting from Drake Jeffries (16 points on 5-of-9 shooting) and a post presence from Graham Ike (16 points, 8 rebounds) allowed the Cowboys to survive a nearly successful comeback effort from the Rams. 

Here are the takeaways from Monday night. 

Too many mistakes

After going down 6 with 2:20 left in regulation, the Rams used a 7-0 run to then take the lead with 1:09 to go (69-68). The score remained 69-68 after Jeffries missed a 3-pointer with 42 seconds left and after securing the rebound the Rams could have really put the pressure on Wyoming by scoring. What happened instead was a shot clock violation.

After a disjointed possession Isaiah Stevens couldn’t get up a look in time and the Rams turned it over. It was about as bad of a possession as CSU could have had in that situation, and it also proved to come back and bite the Rams after Ike sunk a pair of free throws to take back the lead for Wyoming (70-69). 

With 6 seconds left and no timeouts to work with, the Rams were still able to break the press, advance the ball past mid-court and ultimately get David Roddy to the free throw line with 1.7 seconds showing on the clock. A pair of made free throws would have given CSU the lead and forced the Pokes to likely try to heave the ball across the court for a game-winning attempt like Grant Hill to Christian Laettner back in 1992. Roddy made the first and missed the second though. So after Wyoming’s missed full-court shot as time expired fell to the floor, the Rams and Pokes went to OT tied at 70 apiece. 

No single moment is to blame for CSU coming up short on Monday. Roddy and Stevens didn’t execute the way that we are used to seeing them perform in a couple of critical situations, but the Rams wouldn’t have even been in it if it wasn’t for them. Roddy still managed to tie the game and force overtime, so there were missed chances to build a bigger lead, but they gave the Green & Gold a shot over 45 minutes. It was just a night where the turnovers piled up, the defense was inconsistent and less shots fell from deep for the Rams. There were a lot of open looks, but the ball didn’t find the bottom of the net consistently for CSU on the 3-ball. Wyoming did a better job of getting to the free throw line as well, as their 24 attempts from the charity stripe more than doubled CSU’s (11). 

It’s easy to complain about the officiating and we’ll address that later, but Wyoming created 20 points off of CSU’s 13 turnovers. And frankly the Rams couldn’t get enough stops when the game was on the line. 

The defense has to be better 

It wasn’t all bad, there were strong moments for the Rams on the defensive end. In particular I felt like James Moors did a pretty impressive job defending Graham Ike, a guy that’s absolutely bullied opponents down low in league games. Ike had 16 points and eight rebounds, but it was not one of those matchups where he was able to do whatever he wanted. CSU was able to get Ike to make some bad passes and record four turnovers. And if you take away his six points off free throws, Ike only recorded 10 from the floor, which is about as well as one can hope to contain him. 

The problem was that while CSU was able to keep Ike under 20 points, the Rams got torched by Maldonado (35 points) and Jeffries (16 points) killed the Rams from beyond the arc. This was the fifth time in conference play that an opponent has shot north of 40 percent from deep as a team, so the perimeter defense as a whole needs to be better. 

What’s perhaps the most alarming, though, is the current trend of opposing players putting together a season’s worth of highlights against the Rams. After giving up 42 points to Bryce Hamilton in the loss to UNLV, Maldonado became the seventh player this season to score 24+ against the Rams. And in all of CSU’s three league losses, one of the opponent’s stars scored their season-high against the Rams. Matt Bradley started the trend with 26 points in SDSU’s beatdown, though he recently topped that figure against UNLV (27 points). And now Hamilton (UNLV) and Maldonado (Wyoming) have done it to Niko Medved’s squad in back-to-back losses. 

I don’t know what the solution is, maybe it’s working in more zones, we’ve seen that occasionally work when the Rams are getting beaten badly by an individual. Whatever the answer is, the Rams have to figure out how to get more stops. The schedule doesn’t get any easier from here. 

Ref Show

The time has come to address the officiating. Although the masses online may disagree, the referees were not the reason that CSU lost. As we’ve already covered, they lost this game because of inconsistent defense, missed opportunities to build the lead late and a plethora of other mistakes. 

While you can’t pin the ‘L’ on the refs, there were quite a few blown calls, including a brutal missed goaltend that resulted in a 5 point swing in Wyoming’s favor. The Pokes were also consistently rewarded for flopping all over the floor. On at least three, arguably four charges called against the Rams, the defender was falling back before contact was initiated or not in a defensive position. So I understand why Ram Nation was vocally frustrated with the whistles on Monday, especially when you remember the Pokes had more than twice as many free throw attempts. 

But again, we can complain about missed calls all night long, but if CSU makes one more basket over the final minute of regulation then they probably would have left victorious. Not to mention that there were questionable calls that went against the Pokes too, that’s just part of basketball. I will say, though, when Ike and Roddy both foul out due to excessively ticky tacky charges, it’s probably safe to argue that the zebras got a little carried away. 

I’ll say it a third time before we move on, because I really want to make it crystal clear that officiating is not what decided the outcome. I just also know that nobody wants to see the best players fouling on questionable charges. And nobody bought a ticket to watch the guys in black and white.

It’s a shame that there were enough bad calls that it’s even worth writing about. 

The pressure is on

There’s no way to sugarcoat it, CSU is in a tough spot right now, with a chance for things to get even tougher if they fall to San Diego State on Friday night. But with games remaining against every contender in the conference, it’s no time for the Rams to start feeling sorry for themselves.

At this point the Rams have essentially gone from a lock to make the NCAA Tournament to a team that’s firmly on the bubble. Non-conference wins over Creighton, Mississippi State and Saint Mary’s will help CSU’s cause, which is huge because that wasn’t the case when the Rams were left out last spring. Due to a COVID-19 pause the Rams missed most of their opportunities to play quality competition in the non-conference slate in 2020-21.

No matter what, though, CSU is going to have to pick up some big wins over the next five weeks, or else Selection Sunday has the potential to be crushing. The Rams could always win the Mountain West Tournament, that is just far from a guarantee. It’s more than likely going to come down to whether or not CSU can earn back the national respect they built up with a 10-0 start to the year. 16-3 is more than respectable, but we all know that the Mountain West doesn’t get the same benefit of the doubt that leagues like the Big East or even the AAC all seem to.

After a heartbreaking loss, the pressure is on. Will the Rams fold, or will it mold them into diamonds down the stretch? We’ll just have to wait and see.