The Dish: Mistakes Help Make the Outcome a Good Win

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FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Nothing to complain about, really, but Niko Medved will find a few things to nitpick, for sure.

His Colorado State men's basketball team played well Friday night at Moby Arena and was never challenged by Arkansas-Pine Bluff in a 91-71 victory. The Rams shot well, defended well, cleaned the class and their stars shined.

They were good, but they can be better. He knows it. More importantly, so do his players.

"The objective is to win, but I think it's about how you play," Medved said. "We always talk about play to play great, and the standard is the standard. Sometimes I think it's easy … what you wouldn't accept in losing you can't accept in winning. Sometimes it's easy if you win, you can gloss over something. You have to enjoy winning, but at the same time, you always have to take an unemotional look at the game and there's always things you can improve on. That's our charge."

The Rams are 2-0 on the season and still haven't played a close game. Still, this is a team which carries high expectations for the season, which means they have to carry them for themselves, too.

Take for instance David Roddy. He scored a career-best 28 points in the game. He matched a career-best with four blocks. He also had 13 rebounds, giving him the 15^th double-double of his career. He's not going to tell you he played bad. He'd be lying through his teeth.

He will tell you he can play better.

"It wasn't a perfect game at all. Too many turnovers," Roddy said. "Coach said we had 20 percent turnover percentage, so one out of every five possessions we're turning it over, and every time we're capitalizing off of a run, that's really when it starts. We start to get sped up and we start to turn over the ball.

"I'm disappointed in myself for that, because I know I can play better."

Find a coach anywhere who doesn't appreciate that type of introspection.

After practicing for nearly four months, the Rams are running a bit of a sprint to start the season with three games this week alone, with another on tap Sunday. They've prepared for a lot of things, but not everything, and not all of it in volume.

The Golden Lions threw a lot at the Rams defensively. They pressed a bit, threw in some 2-3 zone which Medved wasn't sure his team saw at all last season. They did it on the fly, which made it completely different than practice.

And very valuable.

"Game reps. There's only so much you can script in a practice," guard Isaiah Stevens said. "Teams make adjustments all the time, and they throw different looks, different bodies that we don't have on our team, size-wise or anything like that, so I feel for our team it's huge for us to get these game reps, especially with some of the new guys coming in who are going to be big for us."

Before answering, Stevens said his coach wouldn't agree with him, but in actuality, Medved did.

He's definitely finding value in the quick run of games and the variety of looks his team is getting. It transpired from Tuesday to Friday, and he's pretty sure Sunday's game with Peru State (4 p.m. tip at Moby) will offer other twists.

"He's just saying he doesn't like practice. I'm just kidding," Medved said. "At some point, we have to play games. At some point I do agree with him in the sense of you've got to go out there and play people. That's how you get better. You learn more about yourself and your team. I do think that's valuable. I kinda like that we do have a quick turnaround here Sunday and then we get ready to go down to the Virgin Islands.

"We'll have a chance to get back on the practice court still, and we've got some things we need to clean up, but I do think we're in the stage where we do have to play some games."

It's not just the physical the Rams will look at, such as the 15 turnovers in the game. Some issues they balanced out by the end, such as UAPB's work on the offensive glass. While they only shot 37.7 percent in the game, it seemed higher at times because of the shots they were hitting.

Tough shots. Well defended shots. The Rams were guarding hard, which produced 10 blocked shots, the most in a game since 2013, but the Lions hit some tough shots.

That's hard to take at times mentally, but Stevens said one has to learn to roll with those punches.

"That's part of basketball, and that's part of playing high-level basketball," he said. "You're going to come across a lot of players who can make tough shots. They work on their game just like we work on ours. Being able to continue to have the mental toughness to come back possession after possession after possession and keep on trying to dig in and get stops. Over the long haul, you just kind of have to live with those eyes, of them hitting step-backs from 35 feet. They had a lot of tough shot makers, and they definitely hit some tonight, but I felt all in all, we were able to stay the course for 40 minutes."

Stevens, of course, hit some tough shots of his own on his way to 23 points, while also supplying his team with good looks with six assists. The Rams' stars did shine, and they'll need them too throughout the season. There wasn't another teammate in double figures, but there were plenty of contributions.

Also some mistakes. Also, a really good win, albeit with some mistakes. Actually, that's part of what made it so good.

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