Fraschilla, Rice, Dickau and look back at the 2002 Pit game that changed recent Lobo history

Boise State coach Leon Rice earlier this week recalled some of his fondest memories of coaching in the Pit ahead of Saturday night's game against the UNM Lobos — one that might be the final time the Broncos play in the arena with the offseason move to the Pac 12 coming for his team.

One of the first games Rice remembers actually came as an assistant coach at Gonzaga with star guard Dan Dickau, who is the color analyst for Saturday's game, who told the Journal he has a "love/hate" relationship with the Pit.

The love part of that equation happened to come in an overtime win over the Lobos in what could arguably be one of the more pivotal nonconference games in UNM's storied history — a game that had aftershocks far beyond anything Rice, Dickau or Gonzaga really had anything to do with, or probably ever even realized their win triggered.

For former UNM Lobo basketball coach Fran Fraschilla, he joked with the Journal on Friday night, "That game was the reason I have had a great career with ESPN."

Let's dive down a bit of rabbit hole of Lobo lore all brought about by the random Rice and Dickau connection to the Pit and an ESPN "Big Monday" game more than two decades ago.

The game

It was Dickau's senior season at Gonzaga. His Bulldogs were ranked No. 18 in the country and were in Albuquerque on Jan. 7, 2002, to play the back end of a home-and-home series.

The Lobos had won 81-80 in overtime Spokane in 2001 in a game that featured a 45-minute delay when Bulldogs forward Casey Calvary shattered a backboard.

Rice was on the bench for the Zags for both games, one of the top assistants for years along side close friend Mark Few — a spot Rice held until 2010 when he took his first head coaching job at Boise State.

In 2002, the UNM Lobos entered the game with a 10-3 record, some talented players on the roster (Ruben Douglas, Marlon Parmer, Senque Carey, Patric Dennehy, etc.), a sweep of the NMSU Aggies freshly under their belt and buzz of turning the corner starting to build in Fraschilla's third season.

In a game that started well after 10 p.m. for ESPN's "Big Monday" featured Mountain West game, though it ended early Tuesday morning. An announced Pit crowd of 17,423 were on hand, doing their part.

The Lobos, however, were a bit sluggish early and trailed by 10 at halftime, 42-32.

"I remember there was a loose ball and I picked it up and hit a floater at the buzzer at halftime," Dickau remembers, talking about hitting the shot on the south basket in the Pit that visiting teams shoot at in the first half of games.

"It went in and I just sprint off the court and up the ramp. By halfway up the ramp, at that altitude, I was like, 'What am I doing?' But you can't start doing something like that and then just stop halfway, so I ran the whole way up the ramp instead of stopping like I should have."

In the second half, led by the volatile Parmer who had 30 points and five assists that game, and maybe helped a bit of the altitude catching up to the ramp-sprinting Dickau and the Bulldogs, the Lobos closed the gap.

"Dan (Dickau) was a tremendous player, but I will tell you that night, nobody was stopping Marlon," recalls Fraschilla.

"I don't disagree with Fran. (Parmer) was great that game, so hard to guard as a lefty to begin with and that night, he was hitting some tough shots if I remember," Dickau said.

With seven seconds left in regulation and the game knotted, 78-78, Dickau drove toward the basket — this one at the north end of Bob King court.

"There was a bad call toward the end (of regulation) where I got called for a charge," he remembers. "A teammate slammed the ball and got a technical."

Few, Dickau, presumably Rice and everyone else on the Zags bench did not agree with the call.

About 17,000 interested onlookers seemed to think it was a tremendous call by that night's officiating crew of Jim Stupin, Dick Cartmell and Milt Stowe.

The technical sent Douglas — an 87-percent free throw shooter at that point of the season — to the line to, presumably put the Lobos up two with the ball out of bounds to follow.

Rice was on the Gonzaga bench in a huddle with other coaches discussing the plan to foul UNM on the ensuing inbounds play to stop the clock after Douglas put the Lobos ahead.

"The players were like, 'He missed them, coach,'" Rice recalls. "I was like, 'What!?' I didn't even look."

Douglas didn't just miss one free throw, he missed them both in a rare 4-for-8 night at the charity stripe for the man who the following season would lead the nation in scoring.

Said Few to the Journal after the game, "Ruben will never miss two free throws like that again. I know he won't. It's a crazy game; we live and die with all those little rolls."

Said Dickau that night, "We got a second chance after Ruben missed those free throws. I was shocked when he missed them."

On the ensuing inbounds play, needing to go the length of the court in seven seconds, Fraschilla said he instructed Parmer to get down court and "just make a play" — be it passing to a teammate or scoring at the rim. But Parmer fumbled the ball it at midcourt for a moment, leaving only enough time to take a bad, deeper than desired jumper himself.

He missed. Overtime.

Gonzaga outscored UNM 17-12 in the extra frame, including several free throws made by Dickau, who finished with 19 points, 10 assists and a perfect 8-for-8 at the line.

"When you're a point guard and in the bonus, you have to attack and get to the line," he said Friday night.

About 17,000 interested onlookers in the Pit disagreed and no longer had the same high opinions of that officiating crew of Stupin, Cartmell and Stowe.

Gonzaga won 95-90 in overtime.

And things got ugly for UNM.

Former UNM Athletic Director Rudy Davalos told the Journal in 2013 that he remembered Parmer tearing into teammates in the locker room after the game — a sign of things to come.

"It was a turning point for us," Carey, the former Lobo star, told the Journal in 2013 for an article on the Fraschilla era. "That (game) would have been big for us. Losing brings out people's character more than winning. When you win, everything is good. you don't see or pay attention to the majority of the bad frowns out there. But when you're losing, everything comes to the surface."

The Lobos were booed in the Pit a week later during a bad performance against Air Force. Two weeks later there was a 30-point home loss to Utah, one of the worst in Pit history. A day after that loss, Parmer was kicked off the team.

"Looking back, I should have kept him on the team until the end of the season for everyone's sake," Fraschilla said. "Then we could have parted ways, or whatever needed to happen, but I didn't. He was an immature kid at the time and I may have been hard headed, but I think we would have won three, four more games at least. Who knows what might have been different."

Instead, the Lobos went from 10-3 entering that Gonzaga game to finishing 16-14 that season. They lost by 34 to Minnesota in the opening round of the NIT and Fraschilla and Davalos talked the next day. Fraschilla decided to resign.

"It gave me a chance to try the ESPN thing," Fraschilla said Friday night from Provo, Utah, where he's covering a BYU game this weekend. "Here were are what, 23 years not with ESPN and I couldn't be happier doing what I'm doing now."

As for Dickau and that "love/hate" relationship with the Pit — a place he has called multiple games in for CBS Sports Network in recent years and does have high praise UNM and its fans — that Jan. 7, 2002, game wasn't his last played in the iconic arena.

"Hey, that game I enjoyed a lot," he told the Journal in a phone interview Friday night.

It was the one two months later he wasn't as fond of.

Dickau, Few, Rice and the Zags were a No. 6 seed in that year's NCAA Tournament, getting sent back to the Pit — when the Pit still got selected to host such events.

Mountain West champion and No. 11 seed Wyoming, maybe getting a little bit of a home-conference-court bump from Albuquerque fans, beat Gonzaga 73-66 on March 14, 2002, in the round of 64.

It was the last college game for Dickau.

"Yeah, hey, thanks so much for calling and asking about it," he told the Journal on Friday night.

Reach Geoff Grammer at ggrammer@abqjournal.com or follow him on Twitter (X) @GeoffGrammer.