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No. 22 Aztecs face teams right behind them in standings
There are statistics and metrics that illustrate the improvement of San Diego State’s basketball team as it returned to The Associated Press poll at No. 22 on Monday and enters the most important stretch of the regular season, beginning here tonight with a tricky game against Nevada.
Turnover ratios, offensive rebounding rates, shooting percentages, defensive efficiency numbers, bench usage — all of it trending upward.
Coach Brian Dutcher, instead, will take you to the film room and show you the opening play of the second half Saturday night against San Jose State, a largely meaningless possession in a 19-point game while fans are still settling into their seats after a trip to the concession stands.
The Aztecs set up to run their lob play for Keshad Johnson, which Dutcher first developed 30 years ago while an assistant at Michigan. Johnson and Lamont Butler are out top, Matt Bradley on the right wing, Nathan Mensah at the high post, Darrion Trammell in the left corner. Johnson
passes to Butler, Bradley cuts across the free throw line to the left side, Mensah sets a back screen for Johnson, and Butler throws a 30foot lob for a dunk.
Except this is Jan. 28, Game 21 of the season. San Jose State coach Tim Miles and his staff have watched tape and know the play, which ended in rim-shaking, crowd-stirring, momentumswinging dunks the other two times Dutcher called it.
Spartans center Ibrahima Diallo sags off Mensah to protect the rim, and Sage Tolbert III trails Johnson around the back screen that isn’t a surprise because he’s seen it in slow motion on film.
“They saw it coming and took the dunk away,” Dutcher said. “Well, there’s a second part.”
Mensah immediately sets a ball screen for Butler, forcing the 7-foot Diallo to race forward and switch onto Butler. Mensah rolls hard into the open lane while Bradley lifts behind him to the top of the key to occupy
the help defender. Butler passes to Mensah. Mensah dunks.
“We’re playing together more,” Dutcher said. “We’re getting to our second option. We run a play and they take away the first option, and then we’re flowing into the second thing. We got Nate a dunk on the same play where we usually get Keshad a dunk. That shows we have the ability to get to our secondary options on some of our sets, and that makes us really hard to guard.”
It’s the kind of X’s and O’s sophistication that coaches beam about — and opposing coaches dread. You spend the first half of the season learning how to execute your schemes. Then teams take them away, and the question becomes: Can you counter the counter?
College basketball often is checkers in November and December and the first time through the conference schedule in January.
It’s chess in February and March.
“The defense is getting better, and the offense is getting better,” Dutcher said of his 17-4 team that sits alone atop the Mountain West at 8-1. “That’s the key to Aztecs basketball. It’s the way since Steve Fisher has been here and we built the program. We’ve always gotten better as the season goes on. And I think we’re getting better, which is the key to any season.”
Media that votes in the AP poll rewarded the Aztecs this week by returning them to the top 25 after a two-week hiatus. They spent the first five weeks ranked, rising as high as 17th, then dropped out for four weeks, then reappeared for two before falling out again.
That says less about the Aztecs, who have no bad losses, than the turbulence jostling the upper echelons of Division I. Thirteen members of last week’s top 25 lost, including a staggering 10 teams ranked between Nos. 8 and 20.
That’s nothing. Three weeks ago, there were a combined 20 losses by 16 ranked teams.
If the Aztecs hope to stay there, they’ll have to navigate the most treacherous segment of the conference schedule, with three games in nine days against teams in the top three of the standings: tonight at 16-6 Nevada, which is 10-0 at Lawlor Events Center; Friday against 17-5 Boise State, which will have a full week to prepare to play in a place (Viejas Arena) they won last year; and the following Wednesday at 17-5 Utah State, where they have lost three straight by double digits.
The positive: The Aztecs seem to be playing their best basketball of the season, with a fourgame win streak and an average of 11.8 points per victory.
“We kind of really jell now together, we have a lot of continuity,” TCU transfer Jaedon LeDee said. “That’s probably the reason why.”
LeDee is among several players who have elevated their games, averaging 7.0 points and 5.0 points off the bench over the last two weeks while shooting 63.2 percent with only one turnover.
So has Johnson, with a pair of double-doubles followed by a career-high 16 points and eight rebounds against San Jose State.
So has Butler, who is averaging 12.8 points and shooting 42.9 percent behind the 3-point arc over his last eight games after 8.2 and 30.3 percent over the first 13.
So has Bradley, who went from 10.9 points and 26.7 percent on 3s before he got Penny the puppy from his sister over Christmas break to 16.0 and 44.4 percent since.
The overall offensive efficiency in the Kenpom.com metric has climbed, too, to No. 1 in the Mountain West and 34th nationally — their second-highest rating in the last 12 seasons. (The Malachi Flynn team of 2019-2020 finished 11th.)
Even the defense, which has lagged in recent weeks, looked like its old self in the first half Saturday, holding the Spartans to 14 points and 5-of-24 shooting while forcing 10 turnovers. The singlegame defensive efficiency rating of 85.0 was the lowest in more than a month.
“All that comes with time,” Johnson said. “Everybody is playing better. We’re all getting more comfortable in our roles. We’re all growing to find what our identity is individually. We’re doing our jobs for the team’s benefit.”
That was enough to take 20point leads against Utah State and San Jose State at home last week. But does that show play on the road (and at altitude) at the Lawlor Events Center, where Nevada has already dispatched the other three teams in the upper half of the standings: Boise State, Utah State and New Mexico?
The Wolf Pack were tripped up at UNLV on Saturday. Its record this season following a loss: 5-0.
“We’re 4-0 on the road (in the Mountain West),” Dutcher said. “We have to continue being the best road team in this conference, and that wins championships. But we’ll be put to the test at Nevada. We know that, but hopefully we’re ready for that challenge.”