One of the biggest keys to having even a chance at winning when you are playing a very long, athletic team like TCU or even Colorado, is you have to make the contested layups and shots close to and around the rim. I don’t know how many layups BSU missed but it was a lot! I mean double digits. The fact that the most efficient offensive team in the conference scored 53 says a lot.

The second thing is taking care of the ball at ALL times. When Boise was up 4 and with a little momentum coming down the stretch, Roddy A. Grabbed a lose ball and got careless and had the ball poked away and the CO got a layup. This was very crucial point in the game and kind of got the momentum back a little for CO. It reminded me of when Sakho got the ball poked away against SDSU after they missed a couple free throws and then they hit a wide open 3.

Lastly, you gotta rebound and really limit the offensive rebounds. Boise actually rebounded really well and had a lot of offensive rebounds but they couldn’t convert much on the second chances (did I mention how many layups they missed?)

If you don’t do well with ALL of these keys against a team like TCU or CO you won’t win.

Simple as that.

A lot of other things have to happen too but these will likely determine the winner.