Boise State basketball is having a down year. Is a lack of leadership to blame?

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — Every college basketball team wanting success at the business end of the season needs a leader — the guy who’ll step up in the locker room, take control of a game and hold teammates accountable.

The Boise State men’s basketball team enjoyed three straight NCAA Tournament appearances and a Mountain West Tournament championship in recent years, thanks to the likes of all-time leading scorer Tyson Degenhart and coach’s son Max Rice.

This season, a year after four-year starter Degenhart departed, the Broncos sit at 15-11 and are stuck in the middle of the conference standings, at 7-8. They have several double-digit losses in conference play and they’ve struggled to put together a clean 40 minutes against teams in the top half of the standings.

They have only one avenue to the NCAA Tournament: Pull off upsets to win the Mountain West tourney in March.

There have been plenty of issues, but perhaps an underlying one was revealed in coach Leon Rice’s answer Friday when he was asked who the team leader was, the guy willing to speak up and drag people along: “Me.”

The head coach obviously has to lead, but a team needs other leaders, too — a coach on the floor, a voice in the non-coaching huddles.

“Different teams need the head coach more at different times,” Rice said. “ … I think this is a shared leadership group.”

Junior forward Andrew Meadow, who spoke ahead of Rice on Friday, shared the idea that leadership is split. Both said that senior forward Javan Buchanan is the team’s best vocal leader. Meadow said redshirt senior guard RJ Keene leads with toughness, while Meadow tries to lead through work ethic.

However, something both Rice and Meadow agreed upon is that there’s no one like Degenhart out there. For the better part of 2021-25, he was not just a vocal leader, but also the team’s best all-around player, someone who did everything on the court.

Degenhart, who averaged over 18 points per game his senior season, is now with the Toronto Raptors’ G League team.

“Tyson, he’s a once-in-a-generation kind of guy you get to coach, and so you know all the things you’ll miss. You sometimes don’t know how it can impact the team,” Rice said. “But we’ve had a lot of guys step up, and a lot of guys try it and add value to the team that way. You’re not going to replace guys like (Degenhart) with one guy doing it.”

Guys like Degenhart, Max Rice and Derrick Alston Jr. spent their entire college careers at Boise State, and that leadership showed more and more over time. But the college basketball landscape has changed. Boise State does have a couple of players in that category, though: Keene and Meadow.

But three of the Broncos’ top four in minutes played are transfers: Buchanan, who’s in his second year at Boise State, and first-year transfers Drew Fielder (Georgetown) and Dylan Andrews (UCLA). Meadow, averaging a team-high 29.3 minutes, is the fourth player among that group.

“They’re not freshmen, I get that, but it’s almost like getting a freshman as far as what they know about the program and all the building blocks that you have to teach,” Rice said of transfers. “So sometimes you end up missing a step or two.”

That could lead to hope for next season. Both Meadow and sophomore forward Pearson Carmichael will be upperclassmen having started their college careers at BSU, and Keene is seeking to get a sixth year with the program.

If the Broncos want to return to winning, those players — alongside Fielder, who could come back next season as well — obviously will have to step up. As for this season, Boise State is back in action Saturday against one of the conference’s worst teams, San Jose State (7-19, 2-13 Mountain West). Tipoff is 2 p.m. at ExtraMile Arena.