AZTECS ONE WIN AWAY
SDSU to play for Mountain West title today after putting away San Jose State early in semifinal matchup
Top-seeded San Diego State got off to a fast start and continued to hold off fifth-seeded San Jose State in the semifinals of the Mountain West Tournament on Friday night, beating the Spartans 64-49.
Keshad Johnson and Darrion Trammell each scored 15 points to lead the Aztecs’ dominant performance as they secured a berth in this afternoon’s 3 p.m. final at stake. They’ll meet the winner of Utah State-Boise State, being played late Friday night.
The bigger question might be
what seed the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee assigns the Aztecs a day later.
Their metrics remain solid: No. 9 in KPI, 11 in T-rank, 15 in Kenpom, 16 in NET, 27 in BPI and 33 in Sagarin. But seeding is more art than science, and metrics don’t necessarily translate in a linear fashion.
The Aztecs have been sitting on the cusp of a No. 5 or 6 seed for a couple weeks now according to most bracketolists, and nothing has changed — a particularly good win, a particularly bad loss — that would sway you one way or another. Some projected fields have them as a 5. Others, like ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, have them firmly as a 6.
One problem is most of the projected 5s all won Thursday in their conference tournaments, teams like Miami, Iowa State, Duke and TCU.
Either way, SDSU’s fate might be already sealed, win or lose in Las Vegas, if the Selection Committee values results in conference tournaments like it did last year, which is another way of saying, not at all.
A 5 seed would get them a midmajor opponent in the first round, like Drake, VCU, Charleston or Oral Roberts. A 6 would almost certainly get them a power conference team — Mississippi State, Penn State, Rutgers, maybe Arizona State — and possibly the winner of a First Four play-in game Tuesday or Wednesday in Dayton, Ohio.
An example: One bracketologist had SDSU in Columbus, Ohio, as a 6 seed against the winner of a play-in game. In that scenario, its opponent would take a bus one hour from Dayton to Columbus while the Aztecs flew across the country. Both teams would have the same one-day prep.