Columnist Ron Kantowski: Colorado State proved it was Ram-tough

Monday, March 17, 2003 | 10:02 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

First, they stole the tournament site. Then they stole the tournament championship.

About the only things the Colorado State Rams didn't take on their way out of town was the towels from their hotel rooms.

That CSU will serve as co-host of the Mountain West Conference basketball tournaments for the next three years is strictly a matter of geography, in that it is just 80 miles from the Pepsi Center in Denver.

That CSU left the Thomas & Mack Center with a net around its neck Saturday night also is a matter of geography. It showed the distance from the heart to the mind is not as great as you might think.

In the hours leading up to the announcement of the NCAA tournament field Sunday, more than one bracketologist referred to Colorado State as a team that "came out of nowhere." And for once, it had nothing to do with its hometown of Fort Collins, which is a suburb of Nowhere.

It had everything to do with the Rams entering the MWC tournament as a lowly No. 6 seed and then beating everyone in sight -- No. 3 Wyoming (74-71), No. 2 Brigham Young (86-80 in overtime) and finally, the biggest shocker of all, a 62-61 victory against the supposedly invincible UNLV Rebels on their home court.

Running the table? That doesn't do the Rams justice. They tipped the table over. And then carved their initials on it.

Colorado State entered the championship game as an 8-point underdog. That seemed generous, given the last time the finalists met here, on Feb. 3, the Rebels won by 33 points. The Rams were beaten so soundly that had the Rebels decided to walk off the court, CSU would have had to shoot lay-ups for 20 minutes just to catch up.

"Sacrificial Rams" said the headline in Saturday's Las Vegas Review Journal, above a column stating that CSU would have been wise to catch the red-eye to Denver after upsetting BYU, rather than subject itself to the wrath of the Rebels.

"Well, I'm kind of glad we missed that midnight flight," CSU coach Dale Layer said. "I'm glad we decided to hang around and win a championship."

Of course, anybody paying attention to Colorado State during the first 48 hours of the tournament should have been able to tell that these weren't the sheepish Rams that got sheared by the Rebels and went on to lose six more games in succession, a 73-67 loss to UNLV at Moby Arena serving as the other bookend to a seven-game losing streak.

No, this was the Ram-tough team that went into the Huntsman Center and knocked off conference co-champion Utah, 66-65, on its home court on March 6. It was the only game the Utes lost at home all year, and probably the first sign that CSU was a lot better than its modest 16-13 regular-season record.

The last sign of the Rams' new resolve was the way they closed ranks after Matt Nelson, their unstoppable 7-foot sophomore water boy -- a bum knee has limited Nelson's practice activity to fetching drinks for his teammates -- took a finger in the eye from J.K. Edwards with 13 minutes to go.

When Nelson lumbered up the ramp with an ice pack on his eye, even the most ardent CSU believers -- like those in green warm-ups on the bench -- saw the Rams' NCAA dreams leaving with him. During every deadball, several Colorado State players cast wistful glances up the ramp, hoping that the big guy they call "Nellie" would be headed back down to rescue them.

It never happened. With Nelson watching the rest of the game with his one good eye on TV in the training room, the Rebels took their second 10-point lead of the game, and UNLV fans began to crowd the court, to celebrate the NCAA tournament-clinching win that seemed imminent.

They were still lined up on the baseline -- only in stunned silence -- after Brian Greene, the heart and soul of a CSU team that specialized in both during its weekend in Las Vegas, hit a 12-foot leaping leaner with two Rebels hanging all over him with 5.7 seconds to play.

You could almost hear the air rush out of the building when Greene nailed the winning basket. I wasn't there when the Hindenberg hit those power lines, but you can't go from elation to deflation any quicker than the Mack did Saturday night.

And so, as the Rebels get ready for another sockhop -- an NIT game against Hawaii here Wednesday night -- the Rams will trade in their Cinderella slippers for dancing shoes.

On the night before Colorado State learned it would be matched against mighty Duke in a West regional that is more loaded than Foster Brooks, Greene said the perfect way to conclude this most improbable of seasons would be a victory or two in the Big Dance they have somehow managed to crash.

If that happens, it could be the biggest news to hit Fort Collins since the first locomotive chugged down Mason Street in 1877, opening the town to farm and livestock trade.

"Last year, you saw Southern Illinois -- a team we beat, I might add -- go all the way to the Sweet 16," Greene said about the Rams' goal from here. "We just want to go and play our hearts out."

Sunday on ESPN, Digger Phelps helped Greene end the Silence of the Rams.

"This is a hard-nosed team," he said, trying to educate those outside the Mountain time zone. "You're gonna love Matt Nelson. You're gonna love Brian Greene."

I've got news for Digger. Anybody who was at the Thomas & Mack this weekend and can look at the game objectively already does.