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Wednesday Weekly…April 2, 2025.
About the time Boise State fell to 1-for-11 from the field eight minutes into the game on Monday, KBOI Radio analyst Abe Jackson said, “This is hard to watch.” He wasn’t wrong. It was Clang City on offense. But the Broncos defense allowed them to hang in there, and from that point on they were 35-for-61 for 57 percent in their 89-59 rout of George Washington. Boise State became very watchable. The goal today against Butler is obvious—fix the beginning of the game and stay the course for the rest of it. The Bulldogs are battle-tested, winning a see-saw game 86-84 over Utah on Monday. Pierre Brooks II is the guy Boise State has to stop above all others. He scored 22 points against the Utes and hit the winning layup with three seconds left. (This is where the real cash is on the line: $50,000 in NIL money.)
TRUE SENIORS & TRUE FRESHMEN
Boise State’s soon-to-be-past is meeting its future at the College Basketball Crown in Las Vegas. There’s Tyson Degenhart, of course, who led the Broncos with 19 points against the Revolutionaries, leaving him 10 points short of 2,000 for his career. And Alvaro Cardenas had his usual six assists in the blowout. The future presented itself in the form of true freshman Peanut Carmichael, who had the best overall game of his young career. His 15 points were one thing, but Carmichael made six of Boise State’s school record-tying 16 steals, equaling the most by a Bronco in 12 years. And another true freshman, Pocatello’s Julian Bowie, had his best game in 2½ months as he scored 10 points and was key in putting the game away down the stretch.
BIG THINGS IN THE BOX SCORE
There are two things that lead to a disparity in field goal attempts like the one we saw against George Washington: offensive rebounds and turnovers. The Broncos usually do well on the offensive glass—they had 10 boards on that end against the Revolutionaries. But Boise State forced 22 turnovers. The net result was 72 shots from the field against only 48 for GW—a difference of 24 attempts. That was no small factor in the Broncos’ second half explosion. They put up 57 points after the intermission, their most in any half this season. Of their 89 points on the day, 27 came off turnovers and 15 resulted from second chances.
EXPECTED PORTAL PLACEMENT
The two Boise State players considered most likely to enter the transfer portal are there now, having gone in before the trip to Vegas. Hopes were so high for 7-footer Dylan Anderson when he transferred from Arizona, but the two-time Arizona Gatorade Player of the Year never panned out here and has consequently followed guard Chris Lockett into the portal. Anderson started the first seven games last November and drained Boise State’s three-pointer of the season. “Voila,” thought the crowd. But after the “rock bottom” game at Colorado State in January, he played in just four games and scored zero points.
UNEXPECTED PORTAL PLACEMENT
It was the biggest Boise State football transfer portal loss since Spencer Danielson became head coach: Andrew Simpson announcing last week that he will change addresses. You could see it as a shocking turn of events, but is it really? The Broncos have been so lucky in the portal department. Power 4 programs look at productive players in the Group of 5 these days, and they go fishing. The P4s have NIL money that the G5s can only dream about, and it looks like the hammer came down on the Broncos. Simpson had 94 career tackles and 12.5 sacks, and he made one of the biggest defensive plays of last season with his interception late in the second quarter to set up a touchdown at UNLV. So what will the Broncos do now? Jake Ripp, who moved to EDGE at the outset of spring football, is set to switch back to linebacker.
BOZEMAN OVER BOISE
BroncoCountry.com and 247 Sports first reported this: quarterback Jackson Presley has decommitted from Boise State and is flipping to Montana State. According to 247, Presley, from Kalispell, MT, is the 38th-ranked high school QB in the nation and had 13 listed scholarship offers. Nine were from Power 4 conferences. But it’s the Bobcats who get Presley now. 247 notes that Boise State has recently offered two other high school quarterbacks in the class of 2026 as a result of Presley’s move: Tayden Kaawa of Orem, UT, and Bryson Beaver of Murrieta, CA.
THE FOUNDATION OF A STREAK
Making the rounds this week is a tweet from SuperWest Sports that updates the list of teams with the longest streaks of winning seasons in college football. You’re probably aware that Boise State leads the country with 27 straight. What you might not know is: it isn’t close. Alabama is next with 18 consecutive winning seasons—then it drops down to Clemson and Georgia with 14, Ohio State with 13, Iowa with 12 and Memphis with 11. This run for the Broncos goes back to 1998, Dirk Koetter’s first season as head coach. His quarterback was Bart Hendricks, and both of them will touch on those days as they talk about the unique coach-and-player relationship at the Idaho Youth Sports Commission’s 11th annual Dinner and Auction, Saturday, April 12, at Boise Centre. Great subject matter for a worthy cause.
MORE COLBY BLAINE
College of Idaho’s Colby Blaine was named NAIA Coach of the Year the other day. I mean, who else? Blaine’s Coyotes were 35-2 this season and won their second national championship in three years, ending the campaign on a 25-game winning streak. The guy is a culture constructor. The Yotes’ star point guard, Samaje Morgan, was also tabbed as a first-team All-American, and fellow senior Drew Wyman was named second-team All-American.
MURPH KEYS STEELIES LATE PUSH
The Idaho Steelheads did as well as you could expect them to on the shores of Lake Tahoe, splitting a four-game series with a team that has had their number, the Tahoe Knight Monsters. The Steelheads dropped the two games on the front end and won the two on the back. Leading the comeback charge was veteran forward Wade Murphy, who’s been named ECHL Player of the Week. Murphy tallied seven points in the four games, including two goals in a 5-0 win last Saturday. The Steelies, still on the outside of the Kelly Cup Playoff picture, play three road games in three days this weekend—two at Allen and one at Tulsa. They’re three points out of the fourth playoff spot in the ECHL’s Mountain Division with six games to play.
This Day In Sports…brought to you by MCCAULEY GROUNDSKEEPING…let your landscape and lawn worries be gone!
April 2, 2012: After two consecutive years that saw Cinderella Butler make the NCAA Tournament championship game, college hoops bluebloods Kentucky and Kansas battle it out for the title. The Wildcats, featuring a cast of talented underclassmen headed for the NBA a couple of months later, smothered the Jayhawks 67-59 for their eighth national crown. The “one-and-done” players, those jumping to the NBA after their freshmen seasons, had become a controversial trademark of UK teams under coach John Calipari. This time the contingent was led by college basketball’s Player of the Year, dominant 6-10 forward Anthony Davis.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra and anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK. He also served as color commentator on KTVB’s telecasts of Boise State football for 14 seasons.)
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