FORT COLLINS, CO. — You know what the happiest animal on earth is? It’s a goldfish. It’s got a 10-second memory. After a surprising 53-33 loss to Saint Mary’s on the road Saturday night, the Rams need to be like goldfish.
Following the 20-point beatdown, Niko Medved was honest about his team’s performance Saturday night. The Rams head basketball coach explained that he didn’t think it was possible for his team to struggle so much on the offensive end.
“I’ve never been a part of a game like that. Today was just a historically frustrating game,” Medved said.
Despite entering the matchup averaging 90 points per game, the Rams looked nothing like the potent offensive unit we saw in the first two wins of the season. Obviously, the level of competition was significantly higher — the Gaels are one of the premiere mid-majors in the country. Not to mention that Saint Mary’s didn’t have to miss three weeks of practice and subsequently played three times as much basketball coming in. But even so, it was incredibly surprising to see the Green & Gold struggle to put up less points in this game than they typically score in 20 minutes of action.
The Rams started the night with a scoreless drought of nearly 6 minutes and it just never seemed to get any better for a team that is expected to be one of the better scoring groups in the Mountain West. As a team, CSU made just 12-of-48 attempts from the field (25 percent) and it was even worse from beyond the arc (13.3 percent). No Ram finished with more than 8 points in the loss, and even more frustrating was the lack of control. Every CSU player that saw the floor recorded at least one turnover — except for Adam Thistlewood, who recorded zero points and finished 0-of-4 from deep.
“The first thing we wrote on the board for two days was physicality,” Medved said. “This is what they do. They are an extremely physical team. They’re going to be physical on drives and be physical in the gap. They’re going to wall you up defensively at the rim, they’re going to bust through screens, they’re going to hit you on block-outs, they’re going to go for every ball with two hands. That’s who they are. I have a tremendous amount of respect for them.”
While “A.T.” did struggle to sink his jumpers, it’s not like any individual should shoulder more blame than anyone else. Quite simply, it was just an off night for CSU as a whole. The Rams missed open attempts, struggled to finish layups, got dominated on the glass, and didn’t share the basketball well enough to put themselves in position to make some kind of comeback run — even after holding the Gaels scoreless for nearly 10 minutes in the second half — something that should have given them an opportunity to break back into the game.
“Clearly we looked unprepared on offense,” Medved said, before expressing that he thought his team did a poor job of moving the basketball. As the Rams third-year coach explained, when the Rams were able to get the ball in the lane, not only did they blow way too many chances for easy layups, but they also failed to work the ball back outside and create open looks around the perimeter.
“Some of that was on us,” Medved said, in reference to the amount of missed layups and unforced errors committed by the Rams. But he also pointed out that some of CSU’s struggles were simply the product of Saint Mary’s playing tremendous defense.
Moving forward, a big key for CSU’s offensive success will definitely be better ball movement. It’s going to be extremely difficult for the Rams to win many games when they only produce four assists as a team. Another key will be limiting their amount of giveaways. 16 is simply way too many and it resulted in a 19-3 advantage for the Gaels in points scored off of turnovers. Finally, the Rams have to be better on the glass — something that’s been a consistent struggle for this young team through three games.
If there is a silver lining to the situation, though, it’s that CSU is almost guaranteed to play better in the future. There are going to be very few situations where Isaiah Stevens and David Roddy combine to go 5-of-19 from the floor. Plus, even in spite of the outcome, we saw flashes of significant offensive potential from both Dischon Thomas and James Moors. The former led CSU in scoring with 8 points and made his only 3-point attempt, while the latter made a couple of crucial layups in the post and led the team in rebounds (7).
Ultimately this performance against the Gaels was a disappointment — there’s no denying that — but the Rams will benefit from facing a group as talented as Randy Bennett’s squad in the long run.
“We battled. I don’t think we ever quit,” Medved said. “This was Saint Mary’s ninth game and they’ve played against some really good teams. This was our third game and it was a major step up in competition from what we had seen… We’ll get better from this. I have no doubts that we’re going to improve from this a lot.”
After getting beat down pretty good at the hands of the Gaels Saturday night, the Rams will have to summon their inner Ted Lasso by having the 10-second memory of a goldfish. This team is still stacked with talent and all of their goals are well within reach. Is CSU going to wollow in self pity after an embarrassing showing? Or will they put it in the rearview by coming out with a strong performance against an undefeated Santa Cruz team on Tuesday afternoon?
“It’s going to be another tough test but a good test for us,” Medved said. “We are going to have to play a whole lot better offensively but we will. I don’t want to jinx myself but I honestly didn’t even think our team was capable of doing this. But that’s what happened.”
CSU will practice at Saint Mary’s on Sunday before traveling to Santa Cruz on Monday. As of right now, the Rams do not plan on being able to practice on the road Monday but they were able to light it up in a similar situation in a trip to Tulsa last year, so Medved hopes for a similar result this time around.
“We’re literally just going to have to show up at 1 o’clock on Tuesday and play. But hey, sometimes that’s a good thing,” Medved said. “I’m looking forward to getting back out there and playing again on Tuesday.”
