GAME VS. FRESNO POSTPONED
Aztecs coach Dutcher won’t seek another contest, but MW could have other plans
Three thoughts on San Diego State's 62-55 win at UNLV on Saturday afternoon in the Mountain West opener for both teams:
1. No game Wednesday
Before sending his players onto the floor at Thomas & Mack Center, coach Brian Dutcher had this message for them:
“It's just a blessing to play a game right now. I mean, if you look at the college landscape, half the games are getting canceled or postponed. … Let's take advantage of it.”
Because who knows when they'll play again.
By Sunday morning, Wednesday night's game at Viejas Arena against Fresno State had been postponed. COVID-19 issues
within the Bulldogs program scrapped its game against Air Force on Saturday, and it was probably inevitable that Wednesday at SDSU would be suffer the same fate. If it can't be rescheduled later in the season, it will be recorded as a no contest.
By Sunday night, Wyoming had gone on pause, too. The Aztecs are scheduled to play there Jan. 12.
Wyoming was ready to play Saturday, but the game against Boise State was called off about an hour before tip-off after a couple Broncos players woke up feeling ill and were tested. Their charter flight reportedly returned home with those who had negative tests, and a university statement said “we are currently coordinating ground transportation back to Boise” for the others. (It's a 10-hour, 685-mile drive.)
Five of the conference's 11 teams are on pause now, but all 11 will have missed at least one game by the end of this week. In total, nine games have been postponed. And unlike last year, the conference did not leave a week open at the end of the regular season for make-ups.
The Aztecs' next scheduled game is Saturday at home on CBS against Nevada, which played Saturday night and is not on pause.
The question now becomes: Do they seek a mid-week replacement
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for Fresno State?
The other Mountain West teams missing games Wednesday are UNLV and Nevada. It’s unlikely the conference would make SDSU and UNLV play again four days later, and there’s no use having Nevada come to Viejas Arena on Wednesday when it’s already scheduled to be there Saturday.
The Aztecs (9-3) also could use the rest. They played without either point guard in the 62-55 win at UNLV, missing Trey Pulliam for COVID-19 protocols and Lamont Butler while still recovering from a fractured left wrist.
Dutcher said he hopes to get Pulliam back today or Tuesday, but he won’t have practiced in nearly two weeks. How much time Butler needs is less defined; he has been cleared medically and practiced twice before the UNLV game, then announced in warmups that he was experiencing pain in the wrist and couldn’t play.
“I don’t think I’ll look to add a game, by my choice,” Dutcher said.
2. Pointless pressing
UNLV learned Saturday morning that the Aztecs wouldn’t have Pulliam. It learned a few minutes before tip-off they wouldn’t have Butler, either.
So how come rookie coach Kevin Kruger didn’t immediately dial up a furious, full-court trap?
“We knew they were a little uncomfortable bringing the ball up,” guard Bryce Hamilton said. “I felt like that was something we probably should have done more, to get them very uncomfortable. Yeah, we should have done better at that.”
But it’s not that easy. UNLV didn’t know in advance that both Pulliam and Butler would be missing. Nor did Dutcher, for that matter, admitting he fully expected Butler to play after practicing, and practicing well, earlier in the week.
So there was no reason for Kruger to devote precious practice time to installing a press, something the Rebels have done sparingly this season. Now the decision was whether to try it anyway in the heat of battle.
“We usually err on the side of things we’ve worked on,” Kruger said. “Not being a team that’s run and jump (pressed) 94 feet, we didn’t want to put our guys in a situation where there’s a low
likelihood they succeed. We could have. Maybe we should have at some point. But at the end of the day, we’d rather be on the same page with the things we’ve worked on.”
Instead, they occasionally extended token man-to-man pressure on emergency point guard Adam Seiko, who had only two turnovers in 38 minutes (and none until late in the second half). And the Aztecs escaped without having an obvious vulnerability tested.
“If they were going to (press), it would have to be an in-game decision,” Dutcher said. “The game was fairly close throughout. So maybe they were comfortable with the pace of the game and just thought they’d maybe wear Adam down and win it at the end. … We found a way to get by with both Lamont and Trey not in the game.”
3. Jared Barnett
It is a walk-on’s dream, and nightmare.
Dream, because you sit at the end of the bench, yearning for meaningful minutes in a close game. Nightmare, because you spend all season running the opponent’s offense with the scout team and get no reps with the regulars.
But there was junior guard Jared Barnett on Saturday, all 145 pounds of him, getting minutes in the first half of a game for the first time in his career. He played 117 seconds and was credited
with one turnover, but he didn’t get beat on defense and generally acquitted himself well in difficult circumstances.
“It’s unfair to Jared,” Dutcher said. “Before UCSD, we knew Trey was going to be a game-time decision, so we let Jared run some of our offense. This week, after Lamont practiced, I assumed he would be back. Jared ran the scout team offense and didn’t run any of our offense. Then we had to throw him in there.
“I wish we had Jared with the first and second group all week, so he would have been better prepared with our plays. He’s so used to running the other team’s offense. I could have run a UNLV play, and he would have known it better. But he did a good job.”
Barnett is no scrub, either. As a senior at Los Angeles powerhouse Westchester High, he was second team all-league after averaging 13 points and six assists in quarterbacking a 24-5 team that reached the City Section championship game. He also ran track.
He received interest from a few Division Is and certainly could have played at Div. II. He chose to enroll at SDSU sans scholarship and take what he gets.
“That’s part of having a program,” Dutcher said. “We have guys who pay their price, and when they get an opportunity, they make the most of it.”