BOISE, Idaho — THIS DAY IN SPORTS…January 5, 2013, 10 years ago today:
Boise State posts its largest margin of victory in basketball in school history, walloping Walla Walla University 106-39 in Taco Bell Arena. The Broncos scored the first 18 points of the game and led 47-7 late in the first half. The gap reached 70 points in the second half as Anthony Drmic and Ryan Watkins led Boise State with 22 points apiece. Jeff Elorriaga and Thomas Bropleh added 14 each. The 67-point margin broke the mark of 56 set just six days earlier in a 105-49 win over Corban, when Elorriaga hit a school-record 10 three-pointers.
Everything was clicking — the Broncos shot 79 percent from the field in the first half and 62 for the game. But it was a defensive gem, too, the first time Boise State had held an opponent under 40 points since it allowed just 35 (still a school record) to Cal Poly in December of 1994, in Bobby Dye’s final season as head coach. The 2012-13 Broncos would go on to a 21-11 record and would become the school’s first team ever to earn an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament.
This kind of hits home after the Broncos edged San Jose State 67-64 on Tuesday night. Boise State’s largest margin of victory ever in a conference game was a 106-54 annihilation of the Spartans on New Year’s Eve, 2020. Due to COVID, the game was played at a small club gym in Phoenix, with the Broncos holding SJSU to 23 percent shooting from the field.
San Jose State was hapless, right? Well, two days later the teams faced off again at Grand Canyon University. Naturally, fans wondered if Boise State could win Game 2 by, say, 30-40 points. Then it was…by 20 points? By 10 points? In the final minutes it became: would the Broncos even win? They did, by one, 87-86. Amazing. Safe to say the Spartans are a lot more consistent this season.
The century mark always has to be appreciated around here. The record-setter versus Walla Walla marked only the 30th 100-point game in Boise State’s 44 seasons as a four-year program. There have been 12 since. That record conference win over the Spartans two years ago was the last time the Broncos have scored 100 points in a game.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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