Colorado State's men's basketball team, at 7-25 overall and 0-16 in the Mountain West Conference, was the laughingstock of the MWC last season.
"It was a relief it was over," CSU's head coach Tim Miles said. "It was a perfect storm of things going wrong when I took the job. I think everybody understood that it was a lot of things coming together at one time that added up into a catastrophic season."
But this season, it seems, the Rams have developed their own sense of humor.
Six games into the MWC portion of the season, CSU is 2-4. At the same point last season, the Rams were 0-6 and on their way to a humiliating winless conference season. While Miles and the Rams have nabbed a couple wins in the league so far, there's one streak that stands imperfectly intact. CSU is 0-11 on the road in the MWC under Miles.
"The hardest part has been we had to start over with players," Miles said. "While coach Alford was adding pieces to the puzzle, we were starting over. We have good players now, but just not enough of them."
Things don't look favorable. The Rams are 12-41 all-time in Albuquerque. There is hope, though. Most notably, the Rams eked out a 71-69 win over conference-leader UNLV in Fort Collins, Colo.
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"It's a message to our guys that if you put it together, you play the way we need you to play, you can beat anybody," Miles said. "We're going to need that same mentality against New Mexico."
But no matter the circumstances, Miles said his approach to coaching is unwavering.
"If you're losing, all you worry about is getting better," Miles said. "If you're winning, all you do is worry about getting better. You're not a results person; you're just an I'm-going-to-find-a-way-to-get-better type person."
The Rams aren't the only ones that have improved - it's the entire MWC. All nine teams have at least two conference losses. That equates to competitive clutter that needs to be sorted through.
UNLV, TCU and Utah are perched atop the conference at 4-2, while two other teams - San Diego State (3-2) and UNM (3-2) - are a half game out of first. Interestingly enough, the balance of the league might complicate decisions on at-large bids come tournament time.
"You do worry about us cannibalizing each other," Miles said. "At the same time, it's a good problem to have."
Alford added that "it's still early" and things could change. Still, at the same point last season, BYU and UNLV started to distance themselves from the rest of the MWC. The Cougars won the regular-season title with a 14-2 conference record. UNLV (12-4) finished in second, while UNM was third best at 11-5. The Lobos also tied a school record for most wins, going 24-9, and broke records for the most road wins in a season. And the NCAA selection committee still slammed the door in the Lobos' face. National Invitational Tournament it was for UNM.
"We broke school records last year, and I don't think we were close to getting in," Alford said. "I thought last year's team did about everything they could - other than losing in the second round of the conference tournament."
UNLV and BYU were the only teams to get bids from the MWC - the Cougars' was an at-large berth.
"I hope the (committee) recognizes what our league's done," Miles said. "Hopefully, people across the country are recognizing the strength of the Mountain West Conference."
If things are going to turn out differently this time around, Alford said he must get UNM to understand that these aren't the same Rams that went 0-16 - even though they return three starters from last year's squad.
"You have to play 40 minutes," Alford said. "Last year, if you got them down, the game was in hand. This year, their demeanor has changed. We don't have a big margin for error. If we play well for 30 minutes, we're in trouble."
Miles said the Rams just need to be within striking distance.
"(We need to) hang around," he said. "Just play reasonable enough defense and execute a little something on offense where we can just hang around - take some of that energy and juice out of the building."
Tony Danridge said one thing's clear: It won't take a miracle for CSU to avenge last year's 91-51 dismantling at The Pit.
"Coach has been preaching to us the whole time about how we have to finish games hard," he said. "It's a tight league, a tough race. Everybody's getting knocked out."
