Let’s talk about slights and shots.

Col­orado State advanced from Day­ton to Char­lotte because they were mad and good. The Rams did not have a chip on their shoul­der. Try the entire can of Pringles. They entered Thurs­day look­ing to make a state­ment about their prowess. Instead, they were was no more progress, replaced by an abrupt ending.

Slights pro­vide moti­va­tion, but shots pre­vent elim­i­na­tion. The Rams became human otter pops in a for­get­table first half, and nev­er ful­ly recov­ered in a 56–44 loss to the sev­enth-seed­ed Texas Long­horns inside the Spec­trum Center.

“You look at it, you have to cred­it Texas. We are dis­ap­point­ed. We feel like we didn’t bring our best,” CSU coach Niko Medved said. “I thought we fought like crazy defen­sive­ly. We were not able to stick enough shots.”

Every­thing start­ed well. The Rams opened with an 8–2 lead, look­ing aggres­sive and poised. CSU was rep­re­sent­ed by a healthy fol­low­ing who made the cross-coun­try trip. The Ram­mies in sec­tion 115 were loud and live­ly. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, they could not help CSU’s dread­ful shooting.

March Mad­ness became March Sad­ness over the final 14 min­utes and 45 sec­onds of the first half.

Texas outscored CSU 25–3 dur­ing this stretch as the Rams looked like a team play­ing in their fifth game in their third city over the past week-and-half. Joe Palmer paced the Rams with three points over the first 20 min­utes. Isa­iah Stevens, whose num­ber might even­tu­al­ly get retired in Fort Collins, picked a bad day to have a bad day. He missed his first nine shots, part of the Rams’ 5‑for-27 shoot­ing in the first half.

“We came out with the right inten­si­ty. Stevens is an elite point guard,” said Texas guard Max Abmas, who cred­it­ed the prac­tices lead­ing up to their Thurs­day open­er for suf­fo­cat­ing the Rams. “It was about hav­ing the right inten­si­ty, hav­ing each other’s backs and we were able to get stops.”

Medved admit­ted the Long­horns pres­sure affect­ed the Rams. Texas was faster and longer than Vir­ginia, who imper­son­at­ed a sloth in its First Four loss to CSU. The Rams held Vir­ginia to 14 first-half points on Tues­day. The Rams had no idea they would imper­son­ate them two days lat­er — scor­ing just 11. You read that correctly.

“We got pushed out from our typ­i­cal spots on offense and we can’t allow that to hap­pen,” said Stevens of the first 20 min­utes. “You are going to make and miss shots, but we had to do a bet­ter job of tak­ing care of the ball.”

Added Joel Scott, “They came out and played tougher than us in the first half. There’s not real­ly not much more to it.”

CSU answered with anger and improved accu­ra­cy in the sec­ond half. Stevens scored his first points on an ear­ly pos­ses­sion, and Jalen Lake and Nique Clif­ford shaved the deficit to 35–27 with back-to-back 3s, bring­ing the crowd to life. There was hope of an upset, if only briefly as Stevens found Scott for a layup under the 5‑minute mark.

The Rams’ climb up the moun­tain, unfor­tu­nate­ly, left them exhausted.

Down 44–38 with 4:11 remain­ing, CSU watched its dream of danc­ing dis­solve with a series of turnovers — the Rams fin­ished with an unchar­ac­ter­is­tic 19 give­aways — and missed buck­ets. The Long­horns stood up when the out­come became greasy. Rangy cen­ter Dylan Disu nailed a short jumper and con­vert­ed a free throw to cre­ate an eight-point mar­gin. CSU had few answers for Texas’ Chen­dall Weaver, who deliv­ered 11 points on 5‑of‑7 shooting.

In his last col­lege game, Stevens fin­ished with 10 points, four assists and four turnovers. Scott dropped 10, and Clif­ford had a team-best 10 rebounds.

“It’s hard to grasp for me right now that it’s over. It means every­thing (hav­ing played for CSU),” Stevens said.

This game was more graf­fi­ti than da Vin­ci. Nei­ther team shot well, a tes­ta­ment to defense, but­ter­flies and bad aim. The Rams fin­ished 17-for-58 shoot­ing and 6‑for-24 from the beyond the arc, their 44 points 32 below their sea­son aver­age. Texas was mar­gin­al­ly bet­ter at 22-for-55 and 1‑for-14 from 3.

The loss doesn’t dimin­ish a ter­rif­ic sea­son for CSU. The Rams entered the Top 25 ear­ly in the sea­son, stayed there for weeks, played before sell­out crowds and blend­ed mul­ti­ple trans­fers to post 25 vic­to­ries. They were the last team in, but were not the first team out.

They had a shot. But in a knock­out game, they missed too many, too often.

“It’s been an emo­tion­al year and emo­tion­al week for those guys,” Medved said. “I have been around a lot of great teams and guys, but none bet­ter than this. It stings.”

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