Air Force center wants to finish with big splash

Time is running out for Keith Maren and the three other seniors on the Air Force men’s basketball team.

Wednesday night’s game against TCU at Clune Arena is their penultimate regular season contest. And only one game is guaranteed in next week’s Mountain West Conference Tournament.

So Maren, a 6-foot-8 center, is determined not to let the final moments of his collegiate career play out like Saturday’s game at BYU.

In the 76-57 loss to the Cougars, Maren played a season-low 9 minutes and was held scoreless for just the third time this season and first time since Nov. 24. He had averaged 8.3 points and 30.4 minutes in the Falcons’ previous 13 league games.

“I was really disappointed in myself,” said Maren, who has emerged from obscurity this season to become one of the Falcons’ key players. “I just couldn’t do anything.”

Maren picked up a foul 11 seconds into the game and committed his second just 2 minutes, 11 seconds later.

“I think the early foul trouble really took him out of his flow,” Air Force coach Jeff Reynolds said.

Maren, who appeared in 13 of the Falcons’ 35 games last season and played just 70 minutes, said he hasn’t worn down physically after starting each of Air Force’s 27 games and logging 746 minutes. But the mental part of the game — remembering plays, thinking about how to play different centers — is “wearing down on me,” he said.

Still, Maren said he’ll bounce back Wednesday.

Reynolds is planning on it.

“He’s not in the dog house by any stretch of the imagination,” Reynolds said. “He’ll definitely start on Wednesday, and I look for him to be a big factor in the outcome of the game.”

Note

TCU junior guard Henry Salter, the Horned Frogs’ second-leading scorer and one of the top perimeter shooters in the league, has missed two straight games after being suspended indefinitely. His status for Wednesday’s game is uncertain.