As the page turns on the Col­orado State men’s bas­ket­ball team’s sea­son, the Rams know what they have done so far has been his­toric, but what mat­ters more is what they will do in their last 18 games of the reg­u­lar season.

The No. 13-ranked Rams, com­ing off a 12–1 run through non­con­fer­ence play, open their Moun­tain West Con­fer­ence sched­ule with some high expec­ta­tions, not only by the group in the lock­er room, but also prog­nos­ti­ca­tors all across the country.

With qual­i­ty wins over Creighton, Boston Col­lege and Pac-12 schools Col­orado and Wash­ing­ton, the Rams have climbed to their high­est AP Top 25 rank­ing ever and are in the midst of their longest run as a ranked team in pro­gram his­to­ry. Before their Moun­tain West open­er against New Mex­i­co late Tues­day night, the Rams were also ranked No. 15 in the NET rank­ings and No. 30 in the Ken­Pom rankings.

While those rank­ings will even­tu­al­ly fig­ure into when and where they play in March, the Rams’ goal of win­ning a con­fer­ence cham­pi­onship, as well as the con­fer­ence tour­na­ment, all comes down to how their last 18 games play out.

The only blem­ish on CSU’s run through non­con­fer­ence play was a 64–61 loss to Saint Mary’s. Reflect­ing on the first 13 games, head coach Niko Medved said he has been most impressed with the way the team has been able to stay in the moment and the way the new and return­ing play­ers have come together.

“Prepar­ing for the games, for­get­ting about the last one, com­ing in every day and ready to just stay in the moment, and I think they have done that in the games, too,” Medved said. “Bas­ket­ball is a game of runs. We’ve been in a lot of these games where a team makes a run, some­body gets thrown out of a game, what­ev­er it is, and these guys just haven’t flinched in the moment. They’ve found a way to keep fight­ing and stay with it and I think that’s what you have to do.”

Com­ing into the sea­son with some new play­ers and arguably the best play­er in pro­gram his­to­ry, the Rams already had some high expec­ta­tions. A 9–0 start backed those up and the play­ers have per­formed as expect­ed, or better.

Isa­iah Stevens has already become the program’s all-time lead­ing scor­er. He had 1,999 points going into the con­fer­ence open­er against New Mex­i­co. He was also aver­ag­ing 17.3 points and 7.3 assists per game head­ing into Tues­day night. Trans­fers Nique Clif­ford and Joel Scott have made their impacts felt as well, with Clif­ford aver­ag­ing 13.2 points and 6.1 rebounds per game and Scott aver­ag­ing 12.2 points and 5.8 rebounds.

Patrick Carti­er was steady through­out non­con­fer­ence play as well with an aver­age of 12.8 points per game, while the Rams received con­tri­bu­tions off the bench from a num­ber of play­ers, most notably Joe Palmer, Kyan Evans, Rashaan Mbe­m­ba and Javonte Johnson.

CSU hasn’t let the injury bug hit them too hard. Carti­er missed a cou­ple of games, as have Jalen Lake and Josi­ah Strong. Lake returned last Fri­day against Adams State after miss­ing a few games and Strong is on the verge of return­ing as well.

In oth­er words, the Rams are get­ting some much-need­ed help back as the Moun­tain West gaunt­let begins.

A quick peek at the Moun­tain West stand­ings shows just how com­pet­i­tive the league will be this sea­son. Going into the first games of con­fer­ence play, the top five teams were a com­bined 60–6. The top four, CSU includ­ed, each have only one loss.

Medved believes that until a team knocks them off, defend­ing league cham­pi­on and nation­al run­ner-up San Diego State is the favorite. He also knows, as the league’s lone ranked team, the Rams have a tar­get on their backs.

“We know we’re going to get everyone’s best shot, everybody’s inten­si­ty, high­est inten­si­ty lev­el,” he said. “But there’s a lot of teams, I think, that can say that. This is going to be a gaunt­let. As a com­peti­tor, I’m real­ly, real­ly look­ing for­ward to it. You have to be able to stay in the moment at the high­est lev­el pos­si­ble. If you win a big game, you have to enjoy it because they’re hard to win. If you lose a tough one, you can’t get caught up and let it beat you twice. You have to quick­ly regroup and refo­cus because they just keep coming.”

After CSU’s con­fer­ence open­er at home against New Mex­i­co on Tues­day, which start­ed at 8:30 p.m. local time, the Rams will hit the road for their next two, at Utah State on Sat­ur­day and then at Boise State next Tuesday.