Matt L. Stephens

matthewstephens@coloradoan.com

There was a hot start to the season followed by months of underperforming. The team had four seniors. It won a few games it shouldn’t have and lost even more it had no business being on the wrong end of. It took a No. 6 seed into the Mountain West tournament.

Sound familiar? This isn’t the story of the 2015-16 CSU men's basketball team, though the description sounds identical. The latest Rams enter Wednesday’s Mountain West tournament a No. 6 seed at 16-15, boast a quartet of seniors, opened the year 5-0 with a win at Missouri Valley champion Northern Iowa and have left fans and themselves alike stunned by what they failed to accomplish during the regular season. In 2003, the buildup was the same, but the story had a happy ending. No one gave Colorado State University a prayer to rectify its lackluster 2002-03 campaign in the conference tournament. The Rams, 16-13 at the time, entered bracket play at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas seeded sixth in an eight-team league that housed co-champions BYU and nationally ranked Utah. Only New Mexico and Air Force had worse records than the Rams, and CSU lost road games to both.

HUB: Mountain West basketball tournament central 2016

Somehow, CSU made a run. And luck wasn’t a factor. At least, that’s what Brian Greene claims.

“We got tired of losing a lot of close games. We had a meeting late in the year with Andy Birley, myself and Darian Burke. We were seniors and said, ‘This is it. We have an opportunity this year with how much talent we have to do something special.’ We were deep,” said Greene, a 6-foot-8 forward who averaged 13.9 points and 6.2 rebounds. “We were going to control what we could control, and that’s ourselves. From the last few games of the regular season on, we told ourselves we had to win this one if we wanted to make something of the year. It paid off for us.

“We never felt like we were underdogs. We felt like we weren’t appreciated.”

The second-to-last game of the regular season, CSU used a 3-pointer from Michael Morris with 1.6 seconds remaining to knock off Utah in the Huntsman Center. In the Mountain West tournament, first came a 74-71 win over Wyoming, followed by an 86-80 semifinal victory against BYU in overtime.

Finally came the championship game against UNLV on its home court. Like the Cougars and Cowboys before them, the Rebels swept the regular-season series over CSU, an opponent they, too, would underestimate.

After trailing for all but 2 minutes in the second half, Greene knocked down a 17-footer with 00:05.6 remaining to give the Rams a 62-61 advantage they’d hold on to and steal a bid to the NCAA tournament.

“I’m telling you, we were a deep team, and that was our problem early on. It was a confidence issue. When you have so many guys who can play, there aren’t a lot of minutes for them all,” said Greene, who retired in January after a 13-year professional basketball career in Europe. “Suddenly, the young guys played well down the stretch. Mike Morris played well. Derrick Stevens stepped up. He was a guy who had a ton of talent but that year struggled to show it on a consistent basis."

Again, sound familiar?

Much like it was in 2002-03, CSU has plenty of depth 13 years later. Seniors Antwan Scott, Tiel Daniels and Joe De Ciman are the clue guys, but the Rams can easily go four deep with Prentiss Nixon and J.D. Paige (freshmen), Kimani Jackson (sophomore) and Fred Richardson (senior), players who’ve looked sharp at random points of the season but have failed to put it all together for more than one game at a time. If CSU is going to channel its inner 2003, it’s going to need the bench.

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CSU opens the Mountain West tournament with 11th-seeded San Jose State, a team the Rams have beaten twice by an average of 4.5 points — once needing a tip-in from Paige at the buzzer to force overtime. A win will set them up with Boise State in the quarterfinals, and despite going 1-1 against the Broncos, coach Larry Eustachy admitted Saturday the Rams were the benefactor of a poor call and that they should have lost the controversial game at Moby Arena.

The 2016 Mountain West tournament field is wide open, yes; however, odds against CSU making a run to a title are set at 14-1. So what will it take to overcome?

“What I see is something like what we had. CSU has a talented group that hasn’t quite clicked all year. It’s a similar situation,” Greene said. “From what I’ve seen, this team has a lot of talent that has its ups and downs, and those downs are hard to get through. We went through them a lot in 2003, but that’s what pushed us over the edge at the end.

“All these guys need to do is find a different mindset, play for each other, but also they need to play for themselves and grab what’s out there waiting for them. Play for the pleasure of winning.”

For insight and analysis on athletics around Northern Colorado and the Mountain West, follow sports columnist Matt L. Stephens at twitter.com/mattstephens and facebook.com/stephensreporting.

MW men's basketball tourney more balanced than ever