Aztecs escape late, hold off Colorado State in Mountain West

LAS VEGAS — Survive, and advance.

San Diego State knows the drill.

The top-seeded Aztecs won their 16th consecutive quarterfinal in the Mountain West men’s basketball tournament Thursday, but if you’ve seen them, you know the scores sometimes aren’t as convincing as the streak suggests. A couple years ago, they nearly got beat by eighth-seeded Wyoming. A few years before that, they had to overcome a 21-point deficit – the largest in school history – to beat UNLV in overtime. A few years before that, a buzzer-beater against Boise State.

Add another to the list: a 64-61 nail-biter against an eighth-seeded Colorado State team that refused to give into the fatigue from playing the day before.

But the 20th-ranked Aztecs are in the semifinals Friday night against Nevada or San Jose State because their vaunted defense got crucial stops down the stretch and because Matt Bradley, who has a history of missing them, made a pair of free throws with 16.6 seconds left.

The first rattled around and in. The second was all net, giving the Aztecs a three-point led.

Coach Brian Dutcher called timeout to set his defense, which didn’t look set at all as Colorado State’s Isaiah Stevens went the length of the floor for an uncontested layup. The Rams fouled Nathan Mensah, who made one of two, forcing SDSU to sweat another attempt at late heroics by Stevens, who won the play-in game against Fresno State on a floater in the lane with 2.7 seconds left.

Colorado State coach Niko Medved doesn’t like to call timeout in that situation and just let his team go against the broken floor. Stevens got a decent fall-away look from 12 feet that missed. James Moors grabbed the rebound and tried to go back up, only for Mensah to block it. — Mark Zeigler, The San Diego UnionTribune