The Dish: Rams Break Down Bears Bit by Bit

FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Knowing what a team wants to do isn't the key. Taking it away is, and for much of Saturday afternoon, the struggle was real.

Northern Colorado came to Moby Arena with the reputation of being a decent 3-point shooting team, hitting 34.6 percent to account for more than a third of their buckets this year. The desire was even more pronounced through 20 minutes, as the Bears attempted 20 of their 29 shots behind the arc. Making matters worse, they had made 11 of them. They started hot and ended hot, and walked off the floor into the break with a 41-38 advantage.

Making matters worse, the Rams didn't immediately correct their flaws coming out of the break, and UNC guard Bodie Hume was ready to take advantage. He hit two clean looks early in the half, and as CSU coach Niko Medved said, if a player starts hitting the easy ones, the basket looks big and they'll hit tougher ones. Hume did that, falling back out of bounds and drilling another trey, finishing with a game-best 30 points, hitting 9-of-14 from deep.

The Bears led 55-42 with 15:42 remaining, and for the second game in a row, the Rams were looking at a double-digit deficit.

Not ideal.

"No. Not at all," CSU guard Isaiah Stevens after the 88-79 victory. "But we found a way to get the job done tonight. We'll take it, we'll learn from it and we'll move on."

What the Rams needed was some energy, which the bench provided at times. When the Rams trailed by double figures in the first half, John Tonje and Jalen Lake provided energy and scoring. When it happened again the second half, Tonje made some more noise on both ends of the floor, and so did Chandler Jacobs.

So it remaining calm, which this Colorado State most definitely is in every situation. Coming back isn't new to this team, and neither is confidence or the ability to take a realistic look at what is unfolding.

"One thing we always tell each other before we go out on the floor is be confident out there," Stevens said. "We put the work in, and just be confident in your abilities. It's a really long game, man. Forty minutes is a long time, and I feel we've all been ingrained to just break it up into 4-minute increments. So, just win the next 4 minutes. You can't worry about all that going on that's already happened, or look too far ahead and just think time is slipping away, because really, you have time. Just one-possession-at-a-time mentality, and I feel like so far we've been executing that."

Getting a jolt off the bench is important, sometimes for a certain aspect of the game. Saturday, it was far reaching.

"It's both, but today I felt it defensively," Medved said, his team off to a 7-0 start for the second time in program history. "I think that's what it was, especially Chandler when he came in. You make a couple of those plays, it just picks everybody up. That was awesome to see. Then Isaiah Stevens, like he does, just makes some huge plays down the stretch."

It had to start with stops, and for that to happen, the Rams needed to make some adjustments. They made more than one throughout the game, because UNC shot 37 shots from deep.

While Hume was the main gunner, Daylen Kountz did his damage (four 3s, 19 points), and so did Dru Kuxhausen off the bench (four, 12 points). But they didn't make one in the final 5:47 of the contest.

"I thought maybe some of it was our lineup. There's not science behind this; I thought maybe we wore them down a little bit with our depth, and maybe … I don't know if they were fatigued or not," Medved said. "I thought our intensity ratcheted up as the game went on. Maybe we had a few better matchups that way."

Medved added the team started to switch 1 through 5 on the floor, which he felt helped keep defenders in front of shooters.

"I was just being more intentional, trying to make them feel us," Tonje said. "I felt like the first half, there were a lot of times we didn't have our hands up and they were shooting right over us. I just wanted to make them feel our presence and give them a little more pressure."

He did that on the other end of the floor, too. He was just as aggressive there, scoring 14 of his 20 points in the second half. Stevens also had 14 in the second half and 20 in the game, matching the defensive stops with key baskets.

Chandler scored all nine of his points in the second half, adding to what he was doing defensively to frustrate UNC shooters.

Piece by piece, the Rams broke down the game and chipped away at the Bears' lead until they had built one of their own. They didn't regain it until Tonje hit a 3-pointer with 4:08 remaining, but once it was theirs, they never let go.

"I just think the thing this team does is they have a tremendous amount of belief in each other and what we're doing," Medved said. "They never quit. They realize the game is played for 40 minutes and they lose themselves in the game and they just keep fighting. Guys have a lot of confidence to step up and take the shot when they need to, to keep fighting defensively, to scrap, to make the 50-50 plays. That's who they are."

They're also undefeated.

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