IT’S TALE OF TWO HALVES FOR THE DEFENSE
Aztecs’ numbers drastically suffer after halftime break
Three thoughts on San Diego State’s 72-51 win against San Jose State on Saturday night at Viejas Arena:
1. The second half
The Aztecs don’t have a defensive problem. They have a defensive problem in the second half.
The numbers in their nine conference games are striking. In the first half, they look like the SDSU team that ranked second nationally in defensive efficiency last season. In the second, well, we’re not sure what that is.
First half: 28.7 points, 40.5 percent shooting overall, 26.7 percent behind the arc.
Second half: 35.2 points, 47.7 percent shooting overall, 38.5 percent behind the arc.
They’re 8-1 and in first place, and New Mexico actually shot slightly better in the first half of the lone loss. So they’re obviously still doing something right.
But as the Aztecs (17-4) head into the back half of the conference schedule, which for them is significantly harder, the margin for error with second-half swoons gets smaller. At Air Force, that meant an 18-point lead became five. Against Utah State, a 20-point lead became six. Against San Jose State, a 27-point lead became 11.
So what’s happening? There’s the mental side: Human nature is to relax when you’re leading by three touchdowns. And defense is largely a function of effort.
“When we come out of the locker room in the second half,” Keshad Johnson said, “we have to keep that same energy and play like it’s 0-0.”
Added Jaedon LeDee: “When we already have somebody down, we have to keep our foot on their neck. I mean, everyone is capable of making runs in basketball. When we’re on top, we have to stay on top.”
There’s also a tactical and circumstantial element. Teams are more prone to make radical halftime adjustments to fix a dysfunctional offensive performance, and in the second half the defense is at the opposite end of the floor from the bench — too far for players to hear coaches yelling in a building as loud as Viejas Arena.
“Sometimes, (the other team) does a great job of going back to the drawing board at halftime and figuring out what they can do that they didn’t do in the first half,” Johnson said. “That’s what San Jose State did tonight. They went back to the drawing board and found something that was working. We have to make that change quicker and adjust.”
After the Spartans scored on back-to-back-toback possessions, coach Brian Dutcher called timeout with 14:22 to go. He got tired of screaming and no one hearing him.
“They found something they were comfortable running the second half,” Dutcher said. “They ran ball screen motion, which every team basically runs a version of. It took us a while to settle in on the coverages. I took a timeout to kind of talk
to the guys and talk them through it: ‘Come on, we face this every day. Here’s the coverage we need to do.’
“We just made some tactical reminders to them, and then they did a good job of slowing them down in that offense (later) in the second half.”
2. Offensive efficiency
You don’t see this very often: a 1 next to SDSU for offensive efficiency in conference games.
The Aztecs were seventh in the Mountain West last year, and 167th overall in the Kenpom metric. They’ve climbed to 34th overall and first in the conference, just not for the obvious reason of simply making a higher percentage of shots. In fact, they’ve been outshot in four the last seven games.
You don’t need to shoot better if you shoot more.
One way to quantify it is to add field goal and free throw attempts together. Over the past four games, the Aztecs have attempted 15, 17, 18 and 17 more than their opponents. Why is that?
The Aztecs are turning it over less and rebounding their misses more. Since halftime at Colorado State, they are averaging an unfathomable 6.3 turnovers per 40 minutes — half their season average — and the three against San Jose State are their fewest in a Division I game during the 24-year Mountain West era. And in their last three games, they have 18, 14, and 14 second-chance points off offensive boards.
The result is four of their highest single-game offensive efficiency ratings despite shooting slightly below their season average.
“We just took care of the ball,” Johnson said. “That’s all you can really say. I mean, that’s kind of crazy to get only three turnovers. Coach Dutcher does a great job telling us how important it is to take care of the ball. Hopefully, he’s happy with us with what we did tonight.”
He was.
“Taking care of the ball, that’s important to any team and really important to us,” Dutcher said. “Because if we can get a shot, then Keshad and Nate (Mensah) and Jaedon can go rebound it. We can’t rebound a turnover.”
3. Super fans
It was another sellout at 12,414seat Viejas Arena. But it’s not just the volume of fans that makes it among the most fearsome venues in the college basketball, but their volume. Not how many but how dedicated, how loyal, how invested.
The latest example is John and Marge Spinosa of University City, season-ticket holders for close to 20 years.
They were on their way to the game Saturday when cars on the I-805 south ramp to I-8 east began slamming on their brakes to avoid an accident ahead. Soon, cars were slamming into each other and a sedan went underneath their SUV, lodging into the undercarriage and lifting the rear wheels off the ground.
In total, four cars were involved. All passengers appeared to escape without injury despite wreckage that suggested otherwise.
Police and tow trucks arrived to clear the vehicles, and the Spinosas rode to a tow yard off Mission Gorge Road. The game had started.
Said John via text: “We thought, ‘What the heck, we have nothing else planned. The accident happened. We can still catch the second half.’ I asked the tow truck driver to drop us off at Viejas on the way there, but he said he wasn’t allowed to.”
So they Ubered from the tow yard.
“All the folks around our seats were wondering what happened with us,” John said. “We never don’t go or don’t have replacement folks in our seats. The only disappointing thing is that we couldn’t buy a beer when we got there. It had just shut down. We said, ‘Dude, my car just got totaled and I can’t get a beer?’ He said, ‘Nope, those are the rules.’ ”