Colorado State University Athletics
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Rams Heat Up Late in Season-Opening Victory
11/6/2023 11:20:00 PM | Men's Basketball
Response to deficit highlights win over Louisiana Tech
A coach doesn't expect perfect. Not with new players factoring into the lineup, the lights on and the crowd charged for opening night.
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There are just too many unknowns to be discovered, even for the players. The one Isaiah Stevens liked best is the kind of characteristic everybody loves in a team.
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Not everything can be seen in practice, for specific reasons.
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"I think just the resilience. In practice, you're competing against each other," the guard said. "You're not maybe always paying attention to how the losing team might be or how they respond to bad plays. Even if it's my team, I'm not worried about how they just beat us. I'm trying to figure out what we did to not execute at the level we needed to.
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"Now that we're all pulling in the same direction, finding a way to get the job done even though we were down 11 in the second half, I'm just proud of our response more so."
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The Rams went from an 11-point deficit to an 11-point advantage in roughly five minutes, pulling away for an 81-73 victory over Louisiana Tech at Moby Arena with 4,331 in attendance.
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A tight battle in the first half, one where the Rams only led once and just for a brief moment, turned into the first bout of adversity for Colorado State when the Bulldogs hit their first seven shots of the second half, eight of their first 10.
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At the 14:08 mark, the Rams trailed by 11 points. The way out of the hole was through defense, but it didn't hurt that Stevens became a bit more forceful on the offensive end at the same time. CSU coach Niko Medved made a minor adjustment defensively with switching, keeping the Rams from being so spread out and allowing them to clog up the passing lanes better. Being spread also contributed to La Tech owning the boards, finishing with a 39-23 edge and not allowing an offensive carom to the hosts.
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That disappointed him most on the night, but the response by his team was lauded, even if he'd prefer it go unneeded most of the season.
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"I don't want to try it again if possible. I don't like doing that," Medved said. "I just kept telling them, 'guys, just one possession at a time. Just win this possession and find a way to get a stop.' We had to be more connected as a team. Sure enough, I felt we were going to make a run. I thought when we did and the crowd kind of got going, I thought we just grabbed the momentum when we had to and never looked back."
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What ensued was a 17-1 run with everybody involved. Newcomer Joel Scott was the only Ram in double figures when it started. By the end, Stevens, Patrick Cartier and his former Colorado Springs mate Nique Clifford had joined him.
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Scott, who had a smile on his face all day leading up to the game, paced the effort with 18 points and four rebounds. Not that he was trying to be impressive in his debut, but his new team aided what became fact.
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"I tried to let it flow as much as I could. There's always a little pressure coming into a new program, but these guys made it really easy to relieve that pressure," Scott said. "I didn't feel as much as maybe people might assume. My teammates really helped me with that."
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Clifford chipped in 16, hitting both of his 3-pointers and all six of his free throws.
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None of it from the pair was new to Medved from what he'd seen in the lead-up.
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"That's what we see. That's what we've seen in practice from those guys," he said. "They've been really good on both ends of the floor, looking more and more comfortable every day in what they're doing."
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Stevens would get hot after a slow start to the game, logging the 13th double-double of his career with 15 points and 10 assists. Cartier closed with 14 as Medved went to a tighter rotation. After playing 10 in the first half, only seven Rams saw the floor in the final 20.
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"That's not what we necessarily want to do, I just felt at that point the game was at 11. I was like, alright, we can't let this thing get any further here," Medved said. "We have to find a way to get back and make a run. Tonight, that was the night it happened. Friday, usually the way basketball works, could be completely different."
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As was much of the lineup. Stevens and Cartier were returning starters. Scott, Clifford and Josiah Strong, who only played in eight games the year prior, joined them. Transfer Javonte Johnson and true freshman Kyan Evans added to the mix.
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On the first night, a team is bound to find something new. A squad hopes it is a positive, which finding out you're all in it together in a tough moment qualifies.
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"There's so many new guys, it can be hard to trust especially in game one. We find ourselves in an adverse situation right out the gate, we don't know how guys are going to respond and maybe how they reacted to things in their other program or even high school for some guys," Stevens said. "The fact that we were able to all stay connected -- and we were preaching that at halftime -- stay together, it's a long game."
