Boise State hoops lean on Buchanan’s big second half for victory at Fresno State
The Boise State men’s basketball team has traversed the 2025-26 season without a true team leader, instead relying on individual nights of brilliance from one of several players to win games.
That player on Saturday night in the Broncos’ road trip to Fresno State was senior forward Javan Buchanan.
Buchanan scored a game-high 26 points as Boise State defeated Fresno State 69-53 at the Save Mart Center. Nineteen of Buchanan’s points came in the second half, following a low-scoring first half that ended just 28-23 in favor of the Broncos.
“Especially with how they were guarding Drew (Fielder) ... anybody on this team can step up, and it just happened to be my night,” Buchanan told KBOI in his postgame interview.
Fielder, who’s often been the guy to step up for Boise State (18-11, 10-8 Mountain West) this season, didn’t score a single point as the Fresno State (12-17, 6-12) defense clogged up the paint and took away driving lanes.
While that tactic kept Fielder quiet, it also gave Boise State plenty of space on the outside to cause damage. Seven different Broncos combined for eight 3-pointers in the first half, resulting in 24 of Boise State’s 28 points.
The Broncos attempted an eye-watering 27 3-pointers in the first half before switching things up out of the halftime break. Rather than settling for the outside shot, they drew the Bulldogs into committing to double-teams on the perimeter before dishing the ball off to Buchanan, who found some lanes.
“That was part of their game plan, and it kind of worked in the first half because they gave us a lot of open threes,” Buchanan said. “We could knock them down, but we also want to play to our strengths, because we’ve got a lot of big guys down there.”
Buchanan scored seven points in the opening five minutes of the second half to stretch Boise State’s lead to 38-27. The Bulldogs would bring the score back to 48-43 with just under 10 minutes remaining, but the Broncos quickly pulled further ahead again thanks to seven straight points from Buchanan.
Buchanan ended the night shooting 11-for-18 (61%) from the field while the Broncos were 26-for-65 (40%) as a team. Junior forward Andrew Meadow also scored 14 points and senior guard Dylan Andrews had 11.
While Buchanan was cooking down on one end of the court, redshirt senior guard RJ Keene was getting his hands dirty on defense.
Keene reentered the starting lineup on Saturday for the first time since Feb. 3 against Nevada. He’d suffered from a bout of the flu but told the media he was back at 100% following the Broncos’ win over Wyoming on Tuesday.
That was evident on Saturday, as he kept Fresno State star guard Jake Heidbreder to just three points. Heidbreder averages a team-high 17.4 points but was held to just 1-for-9 shooting as Keene smothered him all game.
Freshman forward DeShawn Gory led the Bulldogs with 20 points, but it took him 20 shots to get to that mark.
“If you can do that, as RJ did, it takes (Heidbreder) out of the game. That really hurt them, because they needed him to beat us, they needed him to score his average,” Rice told KBOI. “That’s what we’re getting a little bit better at, we held some guys below their efficiency and below their average.”
The victory kept Boise State in the hunt for the 6 seed in the Mountain West Tournament with just two regular-season games remaining. Next up for the Broncos is San Diego State (19-9, 13-5) on Senior Night on Tuesday at ExtraMile Arena. Tipoff is scheduled for 7 p.m.
The Aztecs have lost three of their past four games to watch their NCAA Tournament hopes crater.
This story was originally published February 28, 2026 at 9:15 PM.
