But sometimes it doesn\u2019t take anything more than simply having a deep bench and fresh legs. That was the case Saturday afternoon in ExtraMile Arena, as Boise State (16-11, 8-8 Mountain West) defeated San Jose State (7-20, 2-14), which played just seven guys the entire game.<\/p>\n
After a competitive first half that ended with a 36-31 lead for BSU, the Broncos\u2019 depth eventually made the difference in an 84-69 victory.<\/p>\n
Of the seven Spartans who saw the court, four played the full 40 minutes \u2014 an unheard-of stat in this day and age. One guy, Marcus Overstreet, played just three minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew we had to keep running them because they were limited on bodies, so that was a big emphasis from the start,\u201d junior forward Andrew Meadow said. \u201cAnd we knew that if we kept running the whole game, we\u2019re gonna end up tiring them out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meadow scored 16 points on 5-for-10 shooting and was one of four Broncos in double figures. Drew Fielder had a team-high 20 points, senior guard Dylan Andrews scored 12 and senior forward Javan Buchanan 11.<\/p>\n
Ten Boise State players got minutes, and no one played more than Meadow\u2019s 33.<\/p>\n
How Saturday afternoon\u2019s game played out wasn\u2019t necessarily a surprise, because the same thing happened in San<\/a> in late January. Boise State led just 36-33 at halftime before wearing down the Spartans for an 89-58 win.<\/p>\n But this time around, it seemed there might be a blowout in the first half. Boise State went on a 17-0 run to take a 17-2 lead after just six minutes.<\/p>\n But, as has been a theme this season<\/a>, the Broncos let that slip. The Spartans rebounded with a couple of small runs and trailed just 31-29 late in the half.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s always going to be a little bit of ebbs and flows in the game,\u201d Fielder said. \u201cBut I think we just knew that we have to keep our foot on the pedal.\u201d<\/p>\n Boise State coach Leon Rice has said multiple times in recent weeks that a big first-half lead is \u201cfool\u2019s gold,\u201d and he said he was pleased to walk into the team huddle on Saturday and hear his team acknowledging that it could not ever relax.<\/p>\n The Spartans kept pace at the start of the second half, trailing just 41-39 at one point. But the Broncos cracked the game open for good with a 10-0 run to take a 57-43 lead.<\/p>\n And while the offense was flowing, the defense was suffocating a quickly tiring San Jose State squad.<\/p>\n The Spartans rank fourth in the Mountain West for 3-point percentage (36.6%) and hit 15 3-pointers in a surprising win over Nevada earlier this week. The Spartans also hit eight 3-pointers against the Broncos back in January.<\/p>\n This time around, they went just 4-for-23 (17.4%) from beyond the arc and just 1-for-10 in the second half. They were also held to just six assists all game.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re seeking the three, and they got guys that can make them when you let them shoot,\u201d Rice said. \u201cAnd so that was really our emphasis.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cReally happy with the progress there. Because if you\u2019re letting teams just light you up from three with where we have been sometimes, I thought we did a pretty good job of getting to a lot of good contests.\u201d<\/p>\n Boise State gets to stay home this weekend ahead of Tuesday\u2019s home game against Wyoming (15-12, 6-10), another team below it in the Mountain West standings. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. at ExtraMile Arena.<\/p>\n This story was originally published February 21, 2026 at 6:05 PM.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Idaho Statesman<\/p>\n Shaun Goodwin<\/a><\/p>\n Idaho Statesman<\/p>\n Shaun Goodwin is the Boise State Athletics reporter for the Idaho Statesman, covering Broncos football, basketball and more. If you like stories like this, please consider supporting our work with a digital subscription.
\n
\n <\/a><\/p>\n
\n Support my work with a digital subscription<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boise State men\u2019s basketball has won games in a variety of ways this season. There was a nail-biting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[2454,12842,11594,13389,88,90,89,996],"class_list":{"0":"post-188662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boise-state","10":"tag-broncos","11":"tag-mountain-west","12":"tag-san-jose","13":"tag-san-jose-headlines","14":"tag-san-jose-news","15":"tag-san-jose-state"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}