Friday, November 8, 2013

Red-Hot Drmic Keys Resounding Bronco Win

Bottle this one up, especially the first half.

The Boise State basketball team put one of its best shows in years with a 116-87 victory over UT-Arlington tonight in Taco Bell Arena.  Coach Leon Rice's team put up 60 in the first half alone, and were two points shy of a school record for points.

Anthony Drmic was on fire early and often, displaying a devastating mixture of draining threes and lightning quick drives to the hoop to pace the team with 34 points to go along with six rebounds and two assists.  What made Drmic so special tonight was his tenacity on defense, hustling hard to save loose balls, and his amazing passing to wide open teammates under the basket.

Drmic hit 5-11 from downtown tonight and passed Anthony Thomas (2006-2010) for 10th place all-time with 142 career three-pointers.  The sharpshooter from Down Under is zeroing in on becoming the 23rd player in Bronco history to score 1,000 career points--he now has 947.

If you haven't seen this team play yet, you're going to notice two things.  First, the defensive pressure is much improved from last year.  Still nothing like the Bobby Dye days at Boise State, but getting better.  I've said often that if this team played defense, they'd be a Top 10 team and I still believe that.  The second eye-popping thing is the depth.  They now have the depth that the football team has had for years, with solid contributions nine and ten deep in the lineup tonight, and that was without star senior guard Jeff Elorriaga, who sat out for precautionary reasons because of an injury to his head last week.

The Broncos are back and looked better tonight than they've looked, well, since the Bobby Dye days.  Offensively, of course, there's no comparison--this is the best offensive team by far the school has ever fielded.  The entire team was lights out shooting the ball--their 13 three-pointers were just three off another school mark.  If they can keep improving defensively, there's almost no one that can beat them.

Derrick Marks poured in 17 points and included a couple of highlight reel dunks, while Ryan Watkins played another superb game inside for the Broncs with 14 points and 10 boards, true freshman Dezmyn Trent had 13 points and reserve guard Mikey Thompson scored 10 points and had six assists.  Add in Igor Hadziomerivic and Thomas Bropleh with nine points each and you have a deep team. 

Boise State hosts Simpson next Friday in game number two for this special team.

Boise State Soccer Team Headed to MWC Championship!

In only their fourth year of play in the Mountain West Conference, the Boise State soccer team has reached the championship game.  They did it with a 2-1 victory over #2 seed Fresno State in double overtime.