Nique Clifford retained receipts.
The Colorado State star made sure everyone knew how badly underestimated his team was on Saturday when it won the Mountain West Conference tournament after it was ranked as a seventh in the league’s survey for the season.
Clifford and the 12th Seeded Rams have a chance to prove more skeptics errors on Friday in Seattle when they take on Fifth-seeded Memphis in the first round of West Region Games in the NCAA tournament.
“They chose us seventh. It was something we participated in and we wanted to prove all the mistakes,” Clifford said. “It feels super cute to be able to do it.”
Colorado State (25-9) was 5-5 in mid-December and it is now the owner of a winning line of 10 games, all by at least eight points. Rams is 15-2 during the last 17 games and has found its sweet place.
Clifford is in the middle of everything. The 6-foot-6-year-old senior is on average a career high 19.0 points, 9.7 returns and 4.4 assists while preserving 50.7 percent of his shot. When Rams blew out Boise State 69-56 to beat its NCAA ticket, Clifford pumped in a game high 24 points.
Colorado State also gets 11.1 ppg from Jalen Lake and 10.2 from Kyan Evans. Rams also has a firm depth and removes guys from the bench such as Bowen Born and Ethan Morton, who were solid contributors at their previous stops, northern Iowa and Purdue respectively.
In short, Rams seems to be a difficult outside for Tigers (29-5), which swept the American athletic conference regular season and tournament titles. They swallowed the league’s only NCAA bid by stopping UAB 84-72 on Sunday in the Tourney Championship game.
Against Blazers, the 1-2 punch of PJ Haggerty and Dain Dainja made most of the heavy lift that has been the case in the past month. Haggerty got 23 points while Dainja added 22 to go with 12 returns. In the season, Haggerty is an average of 21.8 PPG and Dainja is 14.4 plus 7.2 returns.
But Memphis can be short-handed with the guards Tyrese Hunter (foot) and Dante Harris (ankle) possibly on the shelf for NCAA openers. Hunter is the team’s third leading goal scorer of 13.7 ppg, and he also has significant NCAA tournament experience from his previous stops, Texas and Iowa State.
“I ask for good ankles and good feet, good everything right now,” said Tiger’s coach Penny Hardaway Tuesday. “Good knees. It’s just the honest truth.”
Hunter was injured in the Tigers’ Saturday semi -final victory over Tulane and has a walk -in boot. Hardaway joined Baraka Okojie on Sunday, and the second outflow pulled out four assists in 28 minutes, although he also had four turnover.
The Colorado State Memphis winner goes on to a second round of matchup on Sunday against either No. 13 Grand Canyon or No. 4 Maryland.
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