After a wild conference season, with lots of upsets, a lot of parity, and no overwhelming favorite, here we are: the championship game between the top two seeds, Nevada and Colorado St. Although it felt like there could end up being plenty of chaos in this tournament, we’ve actually ended up with only two upsets: #10 Air Force beating #7 Wyoming and #6 SDSU beating #3 Boise State. In fact, the Aztecs were even favored in that one. Regardless, we’ll be crowning a new conference champion today, so it will be a big day for one of these programs.
Game 8: #1 Nevada vs. #2 Colorado St.
Despite dropping both games to Fresno St. in the regular season, Nevada was able to claw out an 83-72 victory against the Bulldogs with a huge second half. They were sputtering in the first half, only scoring 21 points and going into the half down 11, but things really started to click after that. They dropped 62 points on Fresno in the second half, with Marcus Marshall and Cam Oliver scoring 25 and 18 in the half, respectively. They shot 79.2%, including 8-10 from three point range, which Fresno just had no chance of keeping up with.
Colorado State also rode a big second half into the championship game, beating SDSU 71-63. Despite going into the second half down 36-30, the Rams were able to outscore the Aztecs by 14 to secure the win. Part of the story was that Gian Clavell looked out of sorts for about the first 30 minutes of the game, thanks to some solid defense from Dakarai Allen, but then he started to do that thing he does where he takes some terrible looking shots, but consistently makes them. Weirdly enough, that seemed to coincide with when Allen got into foul trouble. Anyway, the Rams look to ride Clavell, Omogbo, and their defense to one more win, and at this point, why not?
These two teams only played each other once this season, and that was just a week again. Man, the conference scheduling is dumb. Anyway, Nevada won the game in Reno, thanks to a big run midway through the second half that the Rams just couldn’t recover from. CSU actually led for most of the game before that run, so both teams have reason to be confident going into this championship game.
Stat Comparison
(To read the plots, the further away from the center, the better the team is at each stat. That is, for each stat, the best team will have a value on the outside of the radar plot while the worst team will have a value on the very inside of the plot. For an explanation of the stats, click here. All stats taken from kenpom.com)
Key Players
Nevada: Marcus Marshall (SR Guard, 19.7 ppg, 2.5 rpg, 3.6 apg); Cameron Oliver (SO Forward, 15.7 ppg, 8.5 rpg, 1.9 apg); Jordan Caroline (SO Forward, 14.5 ppg, 9.2 rpg, 2.0 apg)
Colorado State: Gian Clavell (SR Guard, 15.5 ppg, 4.9 rpg, 2.0 apg); Emmanuel Omogbo (SR Forward, 12.5 ppg, 8.2 rpg, 2.6 apg); Printiss Nixon (SO Guard, 11.8 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 2.5 apg)
Prediction
Before the tournament started, I picked Nevada to win the whole thing (as did 33.3% of our bracket challenge respondents). I still feel good about that pick, so I’ll stick with it. I’ll guess that the Wolf Pack win 82-77. However, if you believe in story lines and trends, CSU feels more like the team of destiny, like them or not. It should be a good one.
As an aside, regardless of what happens in this game, I believe that Nevada should be in the NCAA Tournament. I’ll probably have a rant ready to go about it at some point.
Game Info
Who: #1 Nevada (27-6, 16-4) vs. #2 Colorado St. (23-10, 15-5)
When: Saturday, March 4, 2017 at 4pm MT
Watch: CBS