ROAD UNKIND THIS TIME
Mitchell injured as Aztecs’ streak away from home ends
LOGAN, Utah
The Cache Valley can be a beautiful place on a clear winter day, with the snowcapped mountains rimming the east side turning burnt orange from the setting sun as shadows creep across the valley f loor.
A few hours later, inside the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum and its multicolored seats that look like autumn foliage, it wasn’t so picturesque.
San Diego State lost 57-45 at Utah State, ending its nation-leading road win streak at 13 games and 677 days, but might have lost a whole lot more than that when star forward Matt Mitchell’s right knee grotesquely buckled on a drive with 5:47 left. There was no immediate prognosis, but let’s be honest here: The television replays didn’t look good.
Trainer Sergio Ibarra rushed on the floor and spent several minutes tweaking and torquing his knee — the standard check for ligament dam
age — before Mitchell, in visible pain, hobbled to the bench. There, he leaned back and put a towel over his head.
Utah State’s team doctor was summoned to conduct an examination that looked like it was for a posterior cruciate ligament tear, not the dreaded ACL. If there was a glimmer of hope — rays of sun still illuminating the tips of the mountains before succumbing to dusk — it was that they kept doing it.
Their uncertainty could be an indication that the ligaments may have survived the trauma and merely been hyperextended. They won’t know for sure until Mitchell gets an MRI, possibly as soon as today.
“I’m concerned, obviously,” SDSU coach Brian Dutcher said. “When your senior — your leading scorer — goes down and (reaches) for his knee, you’re always concerned. I don’t want to react further than that, other than to say that he’s being looked at by their medical staff. … I hate to see him go down after such a great start to the season, and hopefully we’ll get him back. But I don’t know that.”
Said fellow senior Jordan Schakel, who came to SDSU as a freshman with Mitchell: “It’s tough to see, but we don’t know the extent of the injury. But it’s tough.”
Even with a healthy Mitchell, the Aztecs (9-3, 3-2) probably weren’t beating the Aggies (10-3, 7-0) on this night. Not with 11 first-half turnovers. Not with 31.5 percent shooting. Not with an anemic offense that went 10-plus minutes with only two baskets
and increasingly struggles to create shots.
Now they’re facing several games, and perhaps all of them, without the only player who can. The only good news is, after a Saturday morning game here (10:30 a.m., CBS), the next 10 are all against the bottom five teams in the Mountain West — a chance to retool the rotation if Mitchell is indeed gone for an extended period.
The Aztecs finished with 16 turnovers. That wasn’t ultimately the problem. The Aggies had 18.
“It was a rock fight,” Utah State coach Craig Smith said. “It wasn’t very aesthetically pleasing to watch.”
The problem was getting open shots and then making them. The Aztecs were 17 of 54 overall and 5 of 21 behind the arc.
Nathan Mensah had 13 points, nine rebounds and two blocks, essentially playing Utah State 7-foot center Neemias Queta even (14 points, 16 rebounds, one block). But everyone else combined accounted for a mere 11 baskets and shot 24.4 percent.
The only other Aztec in double figures was Mitchell, who had 10 when he went out. Schakel had eight points on 3 of 10 shooting. Terrell Gomez went scoreless for only the second time in 108 games (and, notably, the second time in his last three).
Queta was honored before the game for becoming Utah State’s career blocks leader in a brief ceremony. The Aztecs were in the locker room at the time, but they acted like they had seen him receive a ceremonial ball and had it in the back of their minds.
They were tentative in the paint, overly conscious of his presence and consequently tried to make the extra pass instead of attacking his body.
Of course, that’s not necessarily advised, either. Schakel finally did 12 minutes into the game and summarily was rejected with such force that he crashed to the floor.
The result was a discombobulated offensive performance that arguably was the worst half of the season: 20 points, eight baskets, 11 turnovers, nearly seven minutes without a point and nearly 11 minutes with only five.
“Sometimes what you work on at practice doesn’t make it to the game floor,” Dutcher said. “I thought at practice we did a good job attacking off two feet, trying to get him up off his feet into the air. But we didn’t get enough meaningful paint touches, where it was the low post or off the dribble drive. They did a good job keeping us on the perimeter.
“We weren’t dangerous enough at the offensive end. We have to find a way to be more dangerous. It wasn’t a case where we missed a lot of open shots. We didn’t get a lot of open shots.”
The halftime score was 33-20, and the only reason it wasn’t 43-20 was that the Aggies had seven turnovers of their own.
Dutcher tried everything: Mensah at center, Joshua Tomaic at center, 6-6 Aguek Arop at center in a small lineup, even inserting Keshad Johnson after he last played two weeks ago and only received full medical clearance for his injured shoulder on Thursday morning. He even called timeout
with 7:49 left in the half instead of waiting for the media at the next stoppage, something he is sometimes criticized for not doing.
Nothing worked. Mitchell had two baskets and five turnovers in the opening half. Schakel had two points and attempted only one 3-pointer. Trey Pulliam was 1 of 4 shooting, and the one that went in was an inadvertently banked 3. The bench managed two points.
The Aztecs retreated to the locker room, vowed to take better care of the ball, started the second half and … immediately turned it over again.
They finally settled down and narrowed the margin to five early in the second half. It was still an eight-point game with seven minutes left when Pulliam had a baseline inbounds pass to Mensah knocked away, prompting an outburst from Dutcher for a missed foul call that earned him a technical from referee Chris Rastatter.
Brock Miller (16 points) made both free throws and Queta scored inside to push the margin to 12, and that was pretty much it.
“I thought it was a foul, and they didn’t feel it was,” Dutcher said. “We had a disagreement on that. Most of the time they’re going to win disagreements. … I didn’t feel I deserve a technical, but that’s their judgment to make. Sometimes you have to have a lot of foul language to get one. I got mine (because) they felt that I came on to the floor. If that was the case, they gave me a technical that I was deserving of.”