AZTECS STILL HAVE PLENTY TO PLAY FOR
Loss to the Broncos could bump them to 6 seed in tourney
Each Mountain West conference school keeps an unadorned championship trophy, without year or team or sport, for immediate photo ops in the event that someone clinches a conference title.
Matt Soria, San Diego State basketball’s director of operations, quietly stuffed one into a carry-on bag for the trip to New Mexico just in case the right sequence of results Saturday night — a Boise State loss, an Aztecs win — guaranteed them a share of the Mountain West title.
And it did. Boise State lost in overtime at San Jose State shortly before tip-off at The Pit, then Lamont Butler’s dramatic buzzerbeating
3 gave the Aztecs a 73-71 win.
They posed for photos with the trophy in the locker room. Coach Brian Dutcher
paraded it over his head while being doused by water. Shirtless players pointed to their fingers where the championship ring will go.
“This is why I came here,” Seattle transfer Darrion Trammell said triumphantly, “to get one of these.”
Aguek Arop had an entire orange Gatorade container poured over him. So did Butler.
They had to dry off quickly and pack up, though, with a charter jet waiting at the Albuquerque airport to return them to San Diego that night. There was practice Sunday and Monday, then another flight Monday night, then another road game at second-place Boise State today.
Initially, it appeared the showdown at ExtraMile Arena (6 p.m. PST, CBS Sports Network) would be for first place in the Mountain West.
Now? The 18th-ranked
Aztecs (23-5, 14-2) can lose by 50 and still claim the outright title by beating lastplace Wyoming, which has lost 14 straight at Viejas Arena, there Saturday night. Even if they lose both and share first place at 14-4, they’d likely win the tiebreaker and be the No. 1 seed at the conference tournament next week in Las Vegas.
So it’s a meaningless game today?
It is, until you look through the windshield past the hood and into the distance, at the NCAA Tournament.
SDSU moved up to the last No. 5 seed (20th overall) in the latest projected field by ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi. In The Bracket Project’s Bracket Matrix, a website that compiles 70odd prognostications, the Aztecs also are the last 5.
A loss could bump them onto the No. 6 line, which doesn’t seem like a big differ
ence until you consider who’d they play. The 5 and 6 seed lines straddle the cusp between a mid-major or power conference opponent, between playing a Drake or a Wisconsin, between Marshall or USC. It’s their own bubble of sorts. SDSU has been seeded sixth twice before in the NCAA Tournament. Drew ACC teams twice. Lost twice. Lost big twice, 78-62 against Syracuse two years ago and 79-65 against North Carolina State in 2012.
A No. 6, 7 or 8 seed means you are facing an 11, 10 or 9, which is code for an unranked power conference team that probably didn’t meet preseason expectations, spent the last month on the bubble and is riding a hot streak into the tournament.
This year in particular, there seems to an abundance of talented teams that fit that description: Duke, Kentucky, Michigan State, Arkansas, Rutgers, Iowa, North Carolina State, Pitt, Illinois, Auburn, Oklahoma State, Mississippi State, Wisconsin, West Virginia, USC, Missouri. That also could include North Carolina, which reached the championship game last year, was preseason No. 1 and is sitting squarely on the bubble.
“You make the tournament and that’s your reward, to play a North Carolina, who played for the championship last year?” Dutcher said, shaking his head. “All these teams are going to be dangerous in the tournament. All we can do is take care of our business and win as many games as we can to get the highest seed possible, and then see what the draw is.”
Boise State coach Leon Rice allowed himself a quick peek at the projected field and saw the same thing.
“I only glanced at that once and I was like, ‘Whoa, look at some of those teams,’ ” Rice said. “It happened last year with Carolina.
They were an 8 (seed). It seems like there’s more of that going on … like a lot of teams like that pop in your mind and you’re like, ‘Those guys are a 7 or an 8 or an 9 or 10?’ But that’s future problems.”
At this point, the Broncos (22-7, 12-4) will just be happy getting in the 68-team field after blowing a 12-point lead at San Jose State inside eight minutes to go Saturday and losing in overtime. Now they get the 14-2 Aztecs. Then they close the regular season at fourth-place Utah State, which is 13-2 at home and fighting for its tournament life.
On Monday, Lunardi lowered the Broncos to his “last four in,” with teams like North Carolina, Arizona State and Clemson breathing down their neck.
The Aztecs are in better shape. They climbed four spots in the Associated Press poll to 18th and one spot in the USA Today coaches poll to 19th. They’re 15 in the NCAA’s NET metric, 16 in Kenpom.com’s ratings, 21 in ESPN’s BPI and 28th in Sagarin. Two other respected metrics love them: sixth in KPI and eighth in T-rank.
A No. 5 seed is realistic if they keep winning. A 4 seed comes with the added benefit of geographic protection for the opening weekend (Sacramento, in SDSU’s case), but that might require running the table through the conference tournament while teams above them stumble.
Can they dry off from the Gatorade bath and refocus by today … against a Boise State team celebrating Senior Night and craving revenge for a 72-52 spanking at Viejas Arena on Feb. 3?
Starting guard Marcus Shaver Jr. was in a walking boot and didn’t go. Starting forward Naje Smith played hurt. Leading scorer Tyson Degenhart spent most of the day in foul trouble.
“Completely different team, a hungrier team,” Shaver said of the Broncos that will take the f loor today. “I don’t know if they’re going to be hungry because they already got the trophy, they already celebrated. It doesn’t change our mindset at all. … It sucks we’re not playing for first place, but it’s our get-back game.”