Boise State begins season seeking third straight NCAA Tournament berth, first victory

The Boise State men’s basketball team is on a mission to win its first NCAA Tournament game.

The Broncos are 0-9 all-time in the Big Dance. They made their first appearance in 1976. They’ve been in the tournament in each of the past two seasons but haven’t made it out of the first round — losing to Northwestern earlier this year and to Memphis in 2022.

Head coach Leon Rice, who has led the Broncos to the tournament four times since taking over the program in 2010, said he doesn’t want his players thinking about March Madness in November. He prefers to focus on the Broncos’ first two opponents.

Boise State opens the season at ExtraMile Arena on Tuesday (7 p.m.) against Vanguard — an NAIA program from Costa Mesa, California. The Broncos host San Francisco on Sunday (2 p.m.). The Dons won 20 games last season and were picked to finish No. 3 in the West Coast Conference this year, behind St. Mary’s and Gonzaga.

“Going to the NCAA Tournament is a great accomplishment, but you don’t make those kinds of goals,” Rice said. “That’s not a good use of your focus. It’s about the process. It’s about the goal of accomplishing what we’re doing today, and we’ve got two good teams coming in here.”

Rice might not want to think about the Broncos’ NCAA Tournament drought, but the players can’t get it off their minds, senior Chibuzo Agbo said.

“It feels like we talk about that every single day,” Agbo said. “It fuels us. It makes us want to work harder to get that first win out of the way.”

Agbo said players took turns sharing their goals for the season during a team meeting this summer, and it was unanimous. Every player said they didn’t just want to win a game in the tournament. They wanted to put together a run the whole country will be talking about.

“We have a very high standard for ourselves and where we think we’re going to go,” Agbo said.

The Broncos are well positioned to make a run to the tournament for the third year in a row.

Boise State returns three of its top four scorers from last season’s team, which finished with a 24-10 record and made the semifinals of the Mountain West Tournament.

Tyson Degenhart, a 6-8 junior, and sixth-year senior guard Max Rice are back on the court after both started every game last season. Degenhart led the team with 14.1 points and 5.3 rebounds a game. Rice put up 14 points a night and shot better than 40% from 3-point range.

They’re joined again this year by Agbo, who was the new guy on the roster last year after he transferred from Texas Tech. He started 33 games and averaged 11.5 points a night last season, and Coach Rice said his growth has been obvious in practice.

“Usually you see those jaw-dropping days, then you see more of them and then you see it consistently,” Rice said. “That’s growth. We saw it with Chandler (Hutchison) and other guys that have gone on to do great things.”

The Broncos aren’t nearly as squared away at two pivotal positions: center and point guard. They have experienced players at both spots, but they’re either adjusting to a new role or still trying to find their footing on a new team.

Two transfers are competing for time at center: 6-foot-8, 240-pound junior O’mar Stanley and 6-9 graduate student Cam Martin.

Stanley joined the Broncos after two seasons at St. John’s. Last year, he started 18 games, averaged 4.7 points and 2.8 rebounds a night and shot 45.5% from 3-point range for the Red Storm. Rice said he’ll play in the paint much more than on the perimeter this year.

“He’s getting accustomed to where he fits, where he belongs and where he can play to his strengths,” Leon Rice said.

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Martin is set to begin the seventh and final season of his college career, and Boise State is the fourth team he’ll suit up for. He began his career at Jacksonville State, was a three-time Division II All-American at Missouri Southern State and spent the past two seasons at Kansas. He played in four games for the Jayhawks last season before taking a medical redshirt year.

Martin scored 2,040 points in three seasons at Missouri Southern State, including 43 double-doubles and 56 20-point games.

“My strengths, offensively, are getting my teammates involved with my passing, and my overall scoring,” Martin said. “I can shoot from the perimeter and score in the paint.”

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A pair of sophomores are competing for minutes at point guard.

Jace Whiting played in 33 games and started five last year. He struggled early on but was a regular in the Broncos’ lineup by the time he posted six points, four rebounds and three steals in the Mountain West semifinals against Utah State.

Roddie Anderson III announced in March that he was transferring to Boise State after he averaged 13.1 points, 3.6 assists and 3.8 rebounds a game at San Diego last season.

“The rotation is always a work in progress,” Rice said. “I have to have a feel for who does what in what situations, who does what best in situations.”