The Boise State men’s basketball team picked up its biggest win of the season Saturday night by defeating Saint Mary’s 67-65 in overtime.

“It’s always a fistfight with these guys,” Broncos head coach Leon Rice said after the game at a neutral site in Idaho Falls. “The game had a lot of twists and turns and back and forth. … Just a great game with a lot of little crazy things that happened.”

Senior forward Tyson Degenhart played 41 minutes and led the Broncos (7-3) with 19 points. O’Mar Stanley recorded a double-double with 13 points and 11 rebounds.

Augustas Marciulionis led the Gaels (9-2) with 17 points and six assists.

Boise State concludes non-conference play on Tuesday with a home game against Texas Southern (2-8).

Here are highlights from Rice’s postgame radio interview:

Earning a narrow victory after losing to Washington State

“That’s the difficult thing about athletics. Sometimes you do everything right, and (if) they hit another three-pointer back… that’s athletics. Suddenly you can’t win this game anymore, but that doesn’t mean the sky is falling. But now you win the game and feel great about it. They are rewarded for their work. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have gotten better if another (3-pointer) goes. We got a lot better last week, I know that. The great thing is, the great news is that we were rewarded for it. We had two great preseason wins with Saint Mary’s (and Clemson). … That’s a really good basketball team that we just beat.”

About the success of Degenhart and Stanley against bigger strikers

“Because it wasn’t thrown to them in the mail. It drove her and drove her and drove her. These guys are great at fighting without fouls, but our guys… the only call we didn’t get was when O’Mar put it in the air and escaped contact. Once you have him in the air, make contact. That’s something that in a one-point game, one or two more free throws would help.”

When beating a team like Saint Mary’s

“That doesn’t mean we’ve arrived. There are many things we can get better at. We’re starting to understand the rotations a little bit and feeling better about it. We just need to make sure all of our guys fit together and make each other better, and I think we took a step forward in that tonight.”

On the experience of close games at the Cayman Islands Classic

“The more close games you play, the better you become and the more confidence you gain. Because you need to know what your players will do in certain situations. Sometimes you think you know, but when the stress of a game, the stress of a moment like that… I have people who maybe think too much. That’s exactly what I told them at the one timeout. I thought, ‘Hey, stop thinking and play tight.’ ‘We’re ballers, let’s go play.’ That’s when we took the lead back.”