FORT COLLINS — Colorado State men’s basketball spent all of the first half playing catch-up against a feisty Nevada team Tuesday night at Moby Arena.
The Rams then spent the second half establishing an almost 20-point lead before having to hang on in the final minutes for 79-71 victory, their seventh in eight Mountain West Conference games at Moby this season.
CSU also swept the season series from the Wolf Pack after winning in Reno back on Dec. 21.
With the win, the Rams improved to 17-9 overall and 11-4 in Mountain West play. Nevada dropped to 15-11 and 7-8.
“The guys found a way to get a big win,” CSU head coach Niko Medved said. “It feels great. We knew Nevada was hot. They had won four in a row. We knew they would really engage us physically. But to beat Nevada here today feels good.”
Trailing by three at the beginning of the second half, the Rams quickly tied the game on a three-point play by Rashaan Mbemba that knotted the game at 36.
On the Rams’ next possession, a layup by Jaylen Crocker-Johnson gave CSU its first lead of the game at 38-36.
Shortly after that, Nique Clifford began to do Nique Clifford things. First, he drained a 3-pointer off a pass from the paint by Kyan Evans on a fast break that put CSU up 47-41. On the Rams’ next possession, he took a feed from Jalen Lake and slammed it in for a 49-43 lead.
The Rams took their first double-digit lead at 53-43 on a pair of free throws by Clifford with 12:14 left in the game, and then took their largest lead of the game at 64-45 with 8:48 remaining before allowing the Wolf Pack to chip away at their lead.
Nevada cut the Rams’ advantage to seven, at 72-65, with 1:54 left and then six with 13.5 seconds left.
“We needed to change our look a little bit (in the second half),” Medved said. “Winning is hard. It’s hard. I just thought we needed to kind of embrace the kind of game it was going to be. I think we played with a lot more edge and force in the second half, and we got ourselves going.”
Clifford led the Rams with 22 points to go along with nine rebounds. Lake added 14 points, Mbemba 12 and Evans 11. Mbemba had 11 rebounds for a double-double, the first of his career.
CSU outscored Nevada 46-35 in the second half, but that was a stark contrast to what transpired early in the game and forced the Rams to come from behind.
Nevada scored the first points of the game and led the entire first half.
The Wolf Pack took its largest lead of the game at 29-21 with 7:54 left in the first half, and then again at 31-23 with 5:54 remaining before the break.
CSU was able to trim the Nevada lead in the closing minutes of the first half. A 3-pointer by Clifford cut the Wolf Pack’s lead to 34-30 with 2:37 to go, and a three-point play by Mbemba made it 36-33 as the teams went off the court.
Clifford and Lake each had six points for the Rams in the first half. Evans, Mbemba and Bowen Born each had five. CSU shot only 45% from the field in the first 20 minutes but won the battle on the boards, 15-11.
“I thought our run at the end of the first half was really big for us,” Medved said. “I just thought we needed to change our look a little bit. We looked kind of frustrated, but I thought our guys came out after halftime and really, really played well and engaged them, got more aggressive on offense.”
The Rams will be back in action Saturday at UNLV.
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