‘Good googly moogly’: Boise State’s Cardenas flashes playmaker skills in win over Air Force

The Mountain West was already aware of senior guard Alvaro Cardenas, having had to face him for the past three years when he was with San Jose State.

The Mountain West was unaware of the damage Cardenas could inflict when playing for one of the top teams in the conference.

They know now. Cardenas dished out a career-high 12 assists en route to a double-double as Boise State (9-3, 1-0 Mountain West) defeated Air Force (3-9, 0-1) 77-59 on Saturday at ExtraMile Arena.

“Good googly moogly. I mean, this guy is just crazy, right?” senior forward O’Mar Stanley said about Cardenas.

Stanley was on the receiving end of multiple Cardenas assists on Saturday afternoon, including several alley-oop dunks. Stanley ended the night with 15 points, one of four Broncos in double-digit scoring.

And it wasn’t just the set-ups to Stanley that had the crowd ooh’ing and ahh’ing.

At one point in the second half, he won a 50-50 battle for the ball and almost instinctively twisted his body to hand the ball off to senior forward Tyson Degenhart like a quarterback handing off to his running back. Degenhart had a clear lane to the basket to slam the ball down for two of his game-high 19 points.

Shortly after, Cardenas dribbled the ball up the court, apparently looking to slow down the game. But catching nearly everybody in the arena off-guard, Cardenas slid a hard-thrown bounce pass through the paint to find junior forward Javan Buchanan for an easy backdoor layup.

“As a coach, we’ve seen a lot of pictures,” Boise State head coach Leon Rice said. “We know what the patterns are and how it’s going to happen before it happens. But with Al, he makes those plays almost before you can see them.”

Before coming to Boise State, Cardenas averaged 13.1 points and 5.7 assists per game during his junior year at San Jose State. Through 12 games with Boise State, he’s averaging 10.8 points but 6.4 assists per game.

Many of those assists come off adventurous passes, which Cardenas says he feels he has more liberty to do at Boise State because the Broncos are typically in a stronger position than what he’s used to with San Jose State.

“That’s just the reality of it,” Cardenas said. “I feel like I can get in my state of flow a lot more often, and I’m just playing so free. And it’s amazing to have a coach who just lets me play through mistakes and allows me to be myself.”

Despite the eventual 18-point victory for the Broncos, it wasn’t all clean sailing. Boise State led just 32-31 at halftime and would have gone into the break losing if not for a late Cardenas bucket.

But a 23-6 run from the Broncos to start the second half opened up space between the two teams that Air Force was unable to close. It was a similar story to the Broncos’ home game against Air Force last year when the Falcons led 27-25 late in the first half before Boise State ran out 94-56 winners.

“You just can’t let that frustrate you,” Rice said about the tight first half. “And you’ve just got to keep sawing wood and possession by possession and wear them out a little bit. And I thought we did a pretty decent job of that.”

The Broncos will have Christmas off before returning to Cardenas’ old stomping grounds for a matchup against San Jose State on Dec. 28 at 3 p.m. Mountain Time.