FORT COLLINS — The hottest team in the country was served a tall, cold glass of reality check.

After winning at the Pit for just the fourth time this century earlier this week to stretch its win streak to eight games, Colorado State got punked on its own floor to close the regular season with a 78-67 loss to Boise State on Saturday afternoon at Moby Arena.

Over 7,000 fans showed up hoping to see this Rams team roll into the Mountain West tournament on a hot streak for the second straight season with dreams of playing spoiler in Las Vegas once again, but now Farokhmanesh’s team has to regroup heading into Wednesday’s opener.

“We didn’t give them a ton to get excited about,” Farokhmanesh said. “There wasn’t a whole lot to say in the locker room. They haven’t felt that in a while. They probably took it harder than you probably normally would, just because we haven’t felt that in a long time.”

It was the Rams’ first loss since Jan. 31 at Wyoming. The eight-game winning streak — a program record in Mountain West play — that culminated with a first win at New Mexico since 2022 is over as the five-week high Farokhmanesh’s team was riding came to a screeching halt against a Broncos team that took the fight to CSU from the jump.

“That’s what it felt like,” Farokhmanesh said. “It’s hard to admit that. It’s hard for them to admit that. They don’t come to the game not ready. (Boise) had a better mindset than we did for what was required to win the game. Sometimes, fatigue gets involved in that. It looked like that at times today.”

Boise State jumped out to a quick 6-0 lead, and despite the Rams battling back to briefly take the lead late in the first half, the Broncos closed the opening 20 minutes on a 7-0 run to take an eight-point lead heading into the halftime locker room.

“I felt like we just came out flat. Low energy,” sophomore forward Kyle Jorgensen said. “That happens sometimes. Even though it happened, we gotta get over it and keep playing. It’s a long basketball game. It’s a game of runs. I just thought we did a poor job getting over it, including myself. I was stuck on plays that I wasn’t making.”

Leon Rice’s team jumped out to a similarly hot start in the second half and from there, the game was over. Boise State led by as many as 19 points as CSU could never find a rhythm offensively with their worst shooting performance (6 of 20 from 3-point range) in quite some time combined with the Broncos dominating on the glass, grabbing 13 offensive rebounds in the game for a total of 19 second-chance points.

“That was the game,” Farokhmanesh said. “Whether we miss shots or not, we said from the very beginning, it was gonna be the rebounding. They won the game physically.”

Unlike last year, CSU won’t enter the Mountain West tournament on a hot streak. Last year’s group had won seven straight games heading into Las Vegas and rode that high to three straight wins and a conference tournament championship. 

Even though it will have to be four wins in four days this time around, Farokhmanesh is confident his team has the mentality to bounce back from its first loss in five weeks and look like the team that won eight straight over some of the Mountain West’s best teams.

“There’s not anything we need to change drastically,” Farokhmanesh said. “It’s just a good teaching point. You’ll have the same feeling going into one of these games. Your mindset has to be at a different level of toughness and physicality. We can get there. I’ve seen us get there before. We just gotta get them back up.”

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GAME RECAP

Boise State 78, Colorado State 67

What happened: The Rams (20-11, 11-9 Mountain West) lost for the first time since the end of January with a rough shooting game and a poor rebounding effort in the regular-season finale against the Broncos (20-11, 12-8), who led for nearly 38 minutes and controlled the game throughout. 

Star of the night: CSU had no answer for Boise State forward Drew Fielder, who had a game-high 23 points on 10 for 15 shooting from the field to go with six rebounds. The highly rated Georgetown transfer has lived up to his big NIL price tag lately for the Broncos. 

Quotable: “We’re planning for four games. We’ll come back Monday and it’ll be really light. We’ll prepare for Fresno … and at this point you’re playing all these teams for the third time for the most part. They’re gonna know us and we’re gonna know them. There’s not gonna be a lot of tricks up the sleeve, at that point. It’s gonna be mentally, and can you do what you do better than what they do?” — CSU coach Ali Farokhmanesh 

Up next: The Rams head to the Mountain West tournament, where they will likely be the No. 7 seed facing No. 10 seed Fresno State on Wednesday (7 p.m.) in Las Vegas. Winner will face No. 2 seed San Diego State.