Niko Medved is the best coach in the Mountain West and he’s proved it this season.
Colorado State extended its winning streak to five and reached the 20-win mark for the fifth time in six years with a 93-66 beatdown of Utah State on Saturday afternoon.
According to Jason Walker of the Cache Valley Daily, the 27-point loss to the Rams is the most significant defeat the Aggies have had since joining the league. And although the standings are far from finalized, CSU is now in sole possession of second place going into the final week of the regular season.
“When I look at our team — I mean, I’ve been coaching a long time — it’s hard to imagine being prouder of a group of guys than I am, “ Medved said postgame.
Medved continued by talking about the struggles that the Rams experienced in the non-conference slate. From losing to UC Riverside to blowing a winnable game against Washington, and obviously getting throttled in Boulder, there were quite a few rough moments along the way for this team. Even so, they never lost their sense of togetherness or their willingness to go out and compete, and it resulted in one of the more impressive turnarounds in the country.
Since going 2-5 between Nov. 16 and Dec. 14, the Rams have won 15 out of their last 19 games. They have swept five teams in league play and still have an opportunity to break out the broom two more times if they can beat San Jose State and Boise State. They’ve really made a habit out of winning decisively, too. Saturday’s 27-point blowout was CSU’s seventh conference win of 20+ points, which ties the 2020-21 team for the most of the Medved era.
“Look at where this team was at in November and December, and just the collective spirit, and fight, and stay-together that they’ve had has been beautiful to watch,” Medved said. “To see them get rewarded for doing this is just really cool.”
While the frontrunner for coach of the year is likely Richard Pitino at the moment and that makes sense given the tremendous season that New Mexico has had, Medved is the most deserving candidate.
With all due respect to Pitino and the Lobos, they’re doing exactly what everybody expected. They were picked to finish second in the league and have been nationally projected as an NCAA Tournament team since the beginning. They were supposed to be quite good and they have been.
CSU, on the other hand, was picked seventh. After losing four of the top five leading scorers from last year’s group, including the program’s all-time greatest player Isaiah Stevens, the consensus was that the Rams would struggle. For a while it looked like the projections would be right too. But that’s what makes this 20-win campaign so dang impressive. Nobody would have seen this coming in mid December.
I was as optimistic as anybody about the Rams this year. Said in the preseason that a team with this many new pieces would suffer some lumps before ultimately figuring it out and looking dangerous in February and March. Also took a shot in the dark and proclaimed CSU would win the Mountain West Tournament, which doesn’t feel so crazy now. But even I had serious doubts about that after the way the Rams looked over the first six weeks.
Anybody that’s been around the program under Medved could have guessed that they would improve. They weren’t going to be the disaster that they appeared to be for an entire season. The staff is frankly just too good for that. Plus, as bad as they looked at times, it was clear there were some intriguing pieces in the rotation. But realistically the hope around Christmas was to figure it out enough to avoid a losing season. I don’t think even the biggest of diehards expected a total 180 like this.
“I did say early in the year that I thought it would be tough sledding for this crew,” Medved said. You know what I mean? You could feel it. But I’m like, this is a group that’s gonna get better. I didn’t know how much better, but I did (know they would improve).”
As to what’s made this team click, Medved pointed to the defensive buy-in. It’s easy to rave over the offense, especially after a 93-point outing, but getting buckets has never been a persistent issue in Medved’s scheme. They’re typically one of the more efficient offenses in the conference and that’s the case once again in 2024-25. What makes the Rams a potential bid stealer is the effort they bring defensively.
Since the start of Mountain West action, CSU is the only team in the league that ranks top 3 in offensive and defensive efficiency (Kenpom). The Rams are also the only top 3 team in points scored and points allowed per game. They’re one of the best rebounding units, have a tremendous assist-to-turnover ratio, and CSU averages the second-highest winning margin in league games as well (8.4). That’s a whole lot of ways to say that even if their ceiling on any given night is not as high as UNM’s — and we saw the Lobos thoroughly handle the Rams in both games this winter — CSU has statically been the most complete team in the conference over the last two months.
Medved said that the offense was clunky for a while, which is putting things lightly, but the guys recognized that they could compete by being a gritty team that digs in defensively. Eventually the offense found its way and the Rams got a lot better on the glass as the season progressed, but it’s the commitment defensively that has always been key for this team.
“I think once they embraced that, that’s really when it started to change,” Medved said. “And then from that, I thought our offensive rhythm got going.”
If the MW had kept the old 18-game conference format, at 14-4 right now, CSU would have tied with the 2020-21 and 2021-22 teams for the most conference wins all-time. Because it’s now a 20-game slate, though, there is a good chance that the 2024-25 Rams will break the program’s single-season record for conference wins.
Even if they don’t win another game, five of the top 15 winningest conference campaigns CSU has ever produced have now come with Medved on the sidelines. All of them have been impressive in their own way, but this has been the most impressive coaching job under Medved. Maybe this isn’t fair to say because it’s impossible to quantify but I truly believe that he is the only coach in the Mountain West that could have produced this type of run after where the Rams were about 10 weeks ago.
We’ll see where CSU ultimately ends up in the postseason. If the season were to end today it would be the NIT. If the Rams were to win out in the regular season and at least make the title game in Las Vegas, they could have a real case for an at-large bid though, even without getting the auto bid.
Regardless of how it all goes down, Saturday’s beatdown of a really good Utah State team was one of the most impressive performances I’ve seen in Moby Arena. With an opportunity to make a statement against a team currently projected in the NCAA Tournament field, the Rams didn’t just win. They bullied the Aggies.
“This was a big game,” Medved said. “I think considering the stakes of the game and with it being March, I would say it was our best performance of the year.”