I still have no empirical proof that all the bowls (tied together by the Underworld Bowl Federation) will agree to put NIU and Boise in the same bowl game for my pure enjoyment, but at least they played in basketball in DeKalb. But it was all Broncos. In fact, it was so much Broncos ... Xavier Silas only finished with nine points. I know!
Bryan Hall had 10 for the Huskies in just 19 minutes to lead the MACsters, but once BSU went up by 12 points with 7:37 left in the first half, they never relented a double-digit lead. The Broncs shot 57.1 percent, the Huskies 30.2. There you go.
That's gotta suck to be Boise State basketball. I mean ... anytime you have a great football school, hoops gets overshadowed. At least Auburn's hoops team is atrocious this year ... but Boise basketball is 6-0 in the early season against weak competition. But they are pummeling everyone. I don't think Idaho is ready for another dream season just yet. They're still getting over this nightmare.
But back to NIU hoops: this is just about what I expected out of this team when Silas had a C-minus game. And, look, college kids are going to have these types of nights. There's really nobody else on the team that can step up and dump 20 into the rim. But they have to figure out how to make sure that games like these don't get out of hand. They need higher percentage shots — the guards were trying to create things, and it looked like the tall guys weren't involved enough.
NIU is demoted to 2-3, and their next game is Sunday (11/2) at 1-4 DePaul.