CSU ends perfect month with win over San Jose State | Takeaways
A Tim Miles squad was never going to make it easy.
The record for Miles and San Jose State this season is not impressive, but the Spartans entered the game Feb. 28 against the Colorado State men’s basketball team winners in two of their last three. That included a dominant home win over Nevada.
Add in Miles knowing everything his protégé Ali Farokhmanesh may want to run and this game was going to be a road grinder for CSU.
Sure enough it was. The Rams had to fight for it, but CSU pulled out a 85-73 win.
Here are takeaways from the game as CSU won its seventh in a row.
Brandon Rechsteiner’s heater continues
CSU (19-10, 10-8 Mountain West) has one of the most in-form players in the league right now in guard Brandon Rechsteiner.
San Jose State (8-21, 3-15 MW) was unable to contain the junior guard as Rechsteiner continued his heater.
He hit five first-half 3-pointers. Rechsteiner added a sixth 3-pointer in the second half and finished with a team-high 20 points on 7-11 shooting.
Rechsteiner is averaging 18.3 points per game in his last four and he's hit five 3-pointers or more in each of the last three games.
CSU pulls away late
The Rams led by as many as 10 at one point in the first half but San Jose State cut into it and it was only a five-point CSU lead at the break.
The push from the Spartans continued early in the second half as San Jose State even took a 55-54 lead with just under 13 minutes to go.
But then the Rams slowly took full control.
CSU took advantage of frequent fouls to hit from the free throw line and had good look after good look.
From just about the 14-minute mark until just over 3 minutes were left in the game the Rams hit nine shots in a row.
The last was a Carey Booth layup to give the Rams an 81-69 lead for their largest of the game.
That was game over and the Rams salted away the final minutes.
CSU shot a blistering 62% (28-45) from the field for the game and 9-17 (53%) from 3-point range.
Rashaan Mbemba and Carey Booth had 15 points each as Kyle Jorgensen had to battle foul trouble through the game.
Jevin Muniz had a great game with 12 points and a career-high tying 10 assists.
The Rams hit 20 of 24 free throw attempts.
Perfect February has CSU in business
What a month this was. The Rams started February barely over .500 overall and just 3-8 in Mountain West play.
CSU was coming off an ugly road loss at Wyoming when the calendar flipped to February.
Twenty-eight days later? The Rams are on fire and looking for another March run. The seven wins in a row is the longest for the season for CSU.
Remember last season when CSU got hot late in the season and nearly took it all the way to the Sweet 16? That team “only” went 5-2 in February.
CSU has two regular season games left and is fighting for the No. 6 seed in the MW tournament after being toward the bottom a month ago.
The Rams play at New Mexico March 4 and finish the regular season at home against Boise State on March 7.
Sports reporter Kevin Lytle can be found on social media on X , Instagram and Threads @Kevin_Lytle and on Bluesky .
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Takeaways as Colorado State basketball wins seventh game in a row
