Boise State’s Fielder steals the show on Senior Night in front of packed house
One of Leon Rice’s favorite plays in his tenure as Boise State men’s basketball head coach came on Tuesday night.
Facing the infamous San Diego State full-court press as the Aztecs tried to storm back from a 21-point deficit, junior forward Drew Fielder brought down a rebound and wasn’t fazed. In fact, he turned the opportunity into his own personal one-on-one opportunity, blasting past his defender and leaving several Aztecs in his wake.
“I just saw the opportunity and took it,” Fielder told the media after the game with a smirk.
Tuesday night’s game against San Diego State may have fallen on Senior Night, but it was the junior from Boise who stole the show. Fielder scored a career-high 33 points, alongside nine rebounds, as Boise State (19-11, 11-8 Mountain West) led wire-to-wire to secure an 86-77 victory over the Aztecs (19-10, 13-6).
“He just said, ‘I’m turning this into one-on-one in the park.’ It was great,” Rice said about Fielder. “He’s a handful.”
Fielder will be a popular man on campus for as long as he’s a Bronco after that performance, as an announced attendance of 12,171 at ExtraMile Arena bid farewell to their seniors.
And the Broncos made that homecourt advantage count.
It wasn’t just a case of Boise State playing inside a loud arena, though — the home fans were actively partaking in a way that ExtraMile hasn’t seen all year.
The four seniors who were playing their final games in the arena — Dylan Andrews, Javan Buchanan, Dominic Parolin and RJ Keene — were honored before the game with a jersey ceremony. All four started, with fans chanting “one more year” at Keene, who’s applying for a retroactive medical redshirt to return next season.
Visibly buoyed on, Keene hit a corner three on his first shot of the game to give the Broncos an 8-3 lead. The only louder cheer he got all night was when he fouled out with two minutes remaining after getting five points, five assists and eight rebounds.
Later in the game, San Diego State star guard Myles Byrd missed a wide-open dunk on a breakaway — fans would proceed to chant “Byrd can’t dunk” whenever he’d have the ball.
And that’s not including the whooping and hollering at the referees all night, particularly when a flagrant foul was called on Bronco junior forward Andrew Meadow.
“Moments like this, when you see how the fans were going, just that energy, it felt like it was a sold-out arena,” Andrews, who transferred from UCLA ahead of his senior year, said after the game.
The raucous crowd certainly made a difference. The Broncos built a 22-5 lead in the opening 10 minutes, in large part due to a 14-0 run and a 3-point shooting performance that saw six different players hit a trey across the Broncos’ first seven buckets.
The hot start was vastly different from the reverse fixture in California back in January, when San Diego State ran out to a 21-point lead, 50-29, by the end of the half.
The Aztecs wouldn’t fall as far behind as the Broncos did in January, but Boise State still held a 34-27 lead at the break.
“A start like that, the confidence is growing, you’ve got the crowd into it,” Andrews said. “And for the other team, it’s hard to stop that. You’ve got to really go on a run. And I feel like in the first half, we had a great showing of confidence.”
The Broncos would continue to impose their will, opening the second half with a 17-4 run. Andrews, Buchanan and junior forward Andrew Meadow all contributed to the run before Fielder took over, scoring 21 of his 33 points in the final 13 minutes.
He shot 7-for-10 from the field and an incredible 16-for-18 from the free throw line. He shot over half of the free throws for the Broncos, who went 26-for-33 as a team.
“He came to hoop today,” Andrews said. “Credit to him for playing hard. We see this every day in practice. So it’s great that he gets to show it like this.”
Fielder was joined in the scoring column by Buchanan (17 points), Andrews (13) and Meadow (12).
The Aztecs would go on a couple of runs down the stretch, including a 7-0 run within just seven seconds to narrow the Broncos’ lead to 60-49. A later 6-0 run for San Diego State would claw it back to a 73-66 deficit — the seven-point difference would be the closest that the Aztecs got for the rest of the night.
Rice said the final 10 minutes of the game were the “longest of his life,” but credited his big men for dominating the paint and getting Fielder to the line. Boise State outrebounded San Diego State by a whopping 37-15, including keeping the Aztecs to just two offensive rebounds.
Fielder’s nine rebounds led all Broncos, followed by Keene’s eight and five apiece from Parolin and Meadow.
“If you can beat them on the glass, then you can beat them,” Fielder said. “I just think we really, really wanted this one as a team.”
The Broncos will wrap up the regular season on Saturday at 2 p.m. Mountain time at Colorado State (19-10, 10-8) before heading to the Mountain West Tournament in Las Vegas next week.
The league standings are a logjam, meaning Boise State can finish anywhere from tied for fourth to alone or tied for eighth.
This story was originally published March 3, 2026 at 11:00 PM.
