Basketball isn’t always about painting a beautiful scene like Vincent Van Gogh; sometimes, it’s about getting down and dirty, like Mike Rowe.
Colorado State’s 78-69 victory Jan. 16, in which CSU trailed Air Force for 34 minutes, epitomized what an ugly win looks like.
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“Coach (Niko Medved) kept saying, ‘It’s not art, it’s basketball,’” CSU forward Joel Scott said. “It’s not always going to be pretty, but we came out with the dub, and so now we’re going to learn from it — learn from the mistakes we made and then move on to the next and move on to UNLV.”
The game quite literally came down to the final seconds. The Rams looked poised to lose after Air Force was able to successfully inbound the ball with just 20 seconds remaining. Air Force went 11 of 13 from the line in the second half, seemingly unable to miss. That gave the Rams one option, and with that, the full-court press was on.
As the clock ticked down, the Falcons’ hopes of getting the ball across the timeline dwindled. With only a second left, Air Force guard Ethan Taylor made a last-ditch effort and chucked the ball. Only it wasn’t his teammates who picked up the ball; it was CSU guard Isaiah Stevens, who then found forward Nique Clifford, who was able to tie the game 64-64 with only six seconds left. Air Force had a good look to win but ultimately came up short and tied, bringing on overtime.
“I knew (Stevens) was going to throw it up,” Clifford said. “He sees the floor, so I was just thinking, ‘Make this shot, and send this thing into overtime so we can have a chance.’ That was a huge possession for us, just pressing up on them and getting that steal. Electric environment, I would say, when that happened.”
In the first half, the unease inside Moby Arena seemed to grow larger and larger with every point Air Force added to their lead.
At one point, CSU found themselves down 12, seemingly unable to hit the broad side of a barn. With doubts and fears starting to creep into the hearts of Ram fans, a savior emerged: The man with the headband — the Energizer Bunny — none other than Joe Palmer, led the charge on a 9-0 run that vaulted the Rams to within three points of Air Force heading into halftime.
“I thought Joe Palmer changed the game for us tonight,” Medved said. “We really had nothing going, and he just brought a ton of energy. Offensive rebounds, knocking down shots, (he) had a huge block. And I thought that run that we made at the end of the first half was just massive for us.”
At times, Palmer was the best player on the floor for the Rams. Ending with 11 points, five rebounds, two steals and a block, there’s no doubt Palmer’s energy drastically changed the game.
Energy can be an unbelievably valuable thing when an opponent is seemingly making everything. Air Force found a rhythm in their trio of Taylor, Beau Becker and Rytis Petraitis.
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“The way they play, they play late in the shot clock,” Clifford said. “That’s something that we worked on all week, just preparing for that. Being able to defend all 30 seconds — they hit some tough shots. But it just goes back to that point of just continuing to play when things don’t go your way.”
Both Taylor and Becker had 18 points, with Petraitis leading the game at 22. While the scoring was undoubtedly a big factor, the bigger part of it was the way the Falcons were hitting their shots. Despite playing solid defense for a large part of the Air Force possessions, CSU seemingly ended up staring at a ball that had just gone through the nylon on a highly contested jumper.
But the way Palmer is able to harness the energy from inside Moby makes those gut-wrenching shots just slightly more ineffective — energy that will again be crucial as the Rams look ahead to UNLV.
“Today was frustrating,” Medved said. “But at the end of the day, this is going to show a win in the win column, and hopefully it’s something we can build on moving forward. We’ll have to continue to play better, and I believe we’ll play better Friday night.”
Reach Damon Cook at sports@collegian.com or on Twitter @dwcook2001.
