It was an emotional and hard-fought night for the CSU Rams as they secured their final regular season win before Mountain West tournament play and won for the seniors 64-50 against the Boise State Broncos.
In a game dedicated to the seniors, with 1:06 left on the clock, Coach Ryun Williams subbed in his first two seniors, Jackie Carman and Meghan Boyd to play with Sydney Mech, Kendall Kinzer, and McKenna Hofshild. He then got his last two, Cailyn Crocker and Cali Clark, into the game, completing the fitting tribute while Moby delivered with a standing ovation for everyone.
As the game finished, a tribute we saw just days before with another legendary CSU guard with the number four began, with posters being held up all over Moby saying “Thank You #4”. Hofschild at center court choked up as she thanked everyone for her four years at CSU.
“I was thinking I was gonna get through without crying but I’m just so grateful, and when you have such a great place and such great people beside you it’s hard not to get emotional…hopefully, I got the point across just how thankful I am and how great the support has been here,” said Hochschild about her post-game speech to Moby onlookers.
Aside from honoring the seven amazing seniors, beating the Broncos was just as big an agenda item. Going into the game, the Broncos had a 10-7 conference record, with the Rams at 9-8. Winning this game would allow them to have the same conference record as the Broncos as well as the head-to-head tiebreaker over them when it came to seeding for the tournament.
Securing a fifth seed in the win would give them a bye for the first day of four gamedays to determine a champion of the Mountain West. The Rams answered with ferocity, going up by 10 with five minutes left to play in the third and not dipping back down afterward.
The win was much in thanks to Marta Leimane, who scored 21 points in her 9th start for the Rams, and her fourth time scoring over 20 points in the last month. She played a key defensive role as well, grabbing six boards, a steal, and a block on the night.
“You can see how valuable she is to our lineup, she’s an added weapon,” said Williams on Leimane’s recent larger impact on the court, “She just does so much for us, and we have needed that. We need that other penetrator to get to the basket.”
Leimane, Hofshild, and Crocker all got into double digits against the Mountain West’s number-one scoring defense. Leimane went 10-14 from the field, and Crocker went 4-4 from the field to help the rest of the Rams on an off-shooting night against the best field goal percentage defense.
The Rams held in against one of the best rebounders in the conference, Abby Muse, who only had six on the night. The Rams had a block party with 7 blocks on the night including three from Mech, while the Boise State Broncos, the best blocking team in the conference featuring Muse, recorded none.
It was a fantastic night of hoops from the ladies in green for such a key game against a great defensive opponent. A key game as well in securing a better bid for the upcoming tournament. The Rams pulled through on a big one and put the cherry on the cake of a fantastic season at Moby
The number five seed Rams look ahead as they travel to Vegas and are set for day two’s action in the Mountain West Tournament where they will face the number four seed Nevada Wolfpack on Monday, March 11th at 3:30 P.M.