AZTECS WILL PLAY WAVES ON SUNDAY
San Diego State basketball coach Brian Dutcher keeps saying the key to navigating this craziest of seasons is “to remain f lexible.” And he is.
The Aztecs (2-0) on Tuesday announced they’ll host Pepperdine at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at Viejas Arena in what amounts to their fourth different scheduled opponent in a week’s time.
Initially, they were supposed to play at Saint Louis as part of the inaugural Mountain West-Atlantic 10 Challenge series. That got scrapped in October and the Mountain West instead slotted a pair of conference home games against Colorado State that week after expanding the schedule from 18 to 20 games.
Then Colorado State had its first two COVID-19 positives since June and shut down the program for two weeks, wiping out a pair of nonconference games plus the two at Viejas Arena.
Then Dutcher filled the 13 days before their next scheduled game, Dec. 10 at No. 25 Arizona State, with games against two local NAIA schools: Saint Katherine on Wednesday and San Diego Christian on Friday.
Then Fresno State shut down its program again — for the third time this fall — and canceled four nonconference games, including one Saturday against Pepperdine. The Waves also lost a Wednesday game against San Jose State and were frantically looking for replacements. Dutcher and Waves coach Lorenzo Romar got on the phone, and within a day they had a signed contract.
San Diego Christian is out, Pepperdine is in.
“It’s COVID,” Dutcher said. “You’ve gotta play who you’ve gotta play. And it’s a home game. That had a lot to do with it even though we won’t have our crowd. But being able to play here in the county without having to travel during these COVID times, I think is a good thing.”
Dutcher said they had offers from two power conference teams to play on the road for money without a return game next season. He declined.
“With the two games we led off with, we played good competition and we played well,” he said. “I don’t think we need to go on the road if we can get a good opponent to come in here and play us in our home arena. And we have a trip to Arizona State the following week, so I wasn’t looking to go on the road back-to-back games if I could avoid it.”
The Waves are hardly an automatic W. They know Viejas Arena (and its unique shooting backdrop of red seats) well, having been part of the four-team event there last week with SDSU, UCLA and UC Irvine. They also are dangerous, blowing out UC Irvine on Wednesday and then taking then-No. 22 UCLA to triple overtime Friday before losing 107-98.
They feature maybe the best guard in California in Colbey Ross (23 points, 6.0 rebounds, 5.5 assists through two games), plus several under-the-radar bigs. Kessler Edwards, a 6foot-8 junior forward, is averaging 18.5 points. Kene Chukwuka is a 6-9 grad transfer from Pitt. And sophomore Jan Zidek, the 6-9, 240-pound son of former Lakers center George Zidek, can stretch the f loor with 3point range off the bench.