{"id":199066,"date":"2026-03-01T07:22:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T07:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/199066\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T07:22:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T07:22:20","slug":"boise-state-coach-leon-rice-reacts-to-critical-mountain-west-win-over-fresno-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/199066\/","title":{"rendered":"Boise State coach Leon Rice reacts to critical Mountain West win over Fresno State"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Boise State<\/a> men\u2019s basketball team picked up its third straight win in Mountain West play on Saturday at Fresno State.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Broncos made 11 three-pointers and won the rebounding battle 44-30\u2014including 17 offensive boards\u2014in a 69-53 road victory<\/a> over the Bulldogs at Save Mart Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Javan Buchanan carried the Broncos (18-11, 10-8) with 25 points, six rebounds, three assists and two steals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Boise State finished 11 of 37 (30 percent) from beyond the arc while the Bulldogs (12-17, 6-12) made just three of their 18 three-point attempts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DeShawn Gory led Fresno State with 20 points, 11 rebounds and two steals. Fresno State leading scorer Jake Heidbreder was held to three points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHow about the job (RJ Keene II) did on Heidbreder,\u201d Boise State head coach Leon Rice said. \u201cThat kid has been averaging about 20 a game lately, he\u2019s one of the best shooters in the league, and RJ made just as many threes as him. \u2026 RJ takes him out of the game, that really hurt them. Because to beat us, they needed him to score his average.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re getting a little bit better at. We\u2019ve held some guys below their efficiency and below their average.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are the highlights from Rice\u2019s postgame comments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On three-point barrage<\/p>\n

\u201cThey committed a lot to taking the lane away from us. They were like \u2018All right, we\u2019re going to dare you,\u2019 basically. We countered that\u2014in the first half, especially\u2014with a lot of offensive boards, but we \u2026 got five points off the offensive boards. You\u2019ve got to capitalize on that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a way better job of establishing the paint in the second half, made a few adjustments, got the ball and drew the double team and were able to get some layins off of it. Then they were kind of halfway doubling because we got a layin when they did double, and that\u2019s when Javan did some really good work.\u201d<\/p>\n

On rebounding margin<\/p>\n

\u201cThey forced us into a lot of shots\u2014a lot of threes, long shots\u2014and we did a great job of attacking that ball, tipping it out when we couldn\u2019t get the ball. Because you were like \u2018Man, are we going to shoot all threes tonight?\u201d But it\u2019s OK if you do that if you\u2019re getting second positions. Now, we\u2019ve got to be a little more efficient on those second possessions and capitalize on that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of tough games in here, a lot of games where they\u2019re frustrating and they\u2019re hard. I thought our guys handled it really well.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Boise State men\u2019s basketball team picked up its third straight win in Mountain West play on Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-199066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199066","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=199066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}