SDSU GETS TO RUN IT BACK VS. AIR FORCE

Aztecs won easily Friday, but will 7,000 feet take its toll?

Three thoughts on San Diego State’s 98-61 win at Air Force on Friday night:

1. Second game at altitude

The 7,220 feet of elevation in Laramie, Wyo., can be deceiving. You are on a high, windswept prairie, not surrounded by pine trees and craggy peaks.

You have visuals at the Air Force Academy, the only other Division I basketball venue above 7,000 feet. There are mountains that rise dramatically from the campus, which already sits 1,000 feet higher than Colorado Springs proper. And the rooms at San Diego State’s team hotel look out at 14,115foot Pikes Peak.

But as much as you know you’re in the mountains, the effects on legs and lungs remain the great unknown as the Aztecs play again at Clune Arena tonight. Coach Brian Dutcher has been talking about it, privately and publicly, since the Mountain West adopted a pandemic schedule with two games in three days at the same venue. Dreading it. Fearing it.

Last week’s two games at Utah State were an appetizer. That was 4,770 feet, which, players will tell you, is nothing like 7,081 feet.

Dutcher has been at SDSU long enough to remember the early years of the Mountain West, when they employed a travel partner format where you’d play two games in three days against different opponents — Wyoming and Colorado State, BYU and Utah, Air Force and New Mexico. He also knows the Aztecs are 214 in second games at altitude.

Other athletes have reported similar experiences,

that the effects of elevation are indeed worse in days three and four than day one. It’s why South American soccer teams fly into World Cup qualifiers in La Paz, Bolivia, at 11,932 feet on the day of the game.

There is little scientific research, however, confirming or denying their anecdotal experiences. And experts say physiologically, in terms of maximal oxygen uptake, there’s little difference between days one and three.

“My guess is that it has more something to do with neuromuscular aspects (adaptations in motor control),” says Olivier Girard, an associate professor from the University of Western Australia and one of the world’s leading authorities on athletes and altitude. “What is probably happening is that additional fatigue generated from the training sessions performed during days 1-3 at altitude … will then have a negative impact during days 3-5 (hindered recovery).”

In other words, the bodies of athletes not acclimated to altitude don’t recover from the first game as efficiently as they do at sea level.

Whatever the reason, Dutcher will be preemptively looking for it today.

“The hard thing is, players have so much pride that they want to play through fatigue because they think they’re helping the team,” Dutcher said. “Rarely will a player say, ‘I need (a sub).’ Very rarely. So, we as coaches have to really be watching to see when they lose that half-step. We have to get them before they get to the point where now it’s three more possessions and they can hardly move.

“Even if a guy’s playing well, sometimes here up at altitude you have to make a change anyway.”

2. Shuffling the lineup

Dutcher learned from Steve Fisher, and Fisher was loath to change for the sake of change. He picked a starting five before the season and, barring injury or a catastrophic string of losses, he stuck with it.

So it wasn’t on a whim that Dutcher swapped out two players in his starting unit Friday, inserting freshman Lamont Butler and grad transfer Terrell Gomez for the first time this season in place of Aguek Arop and Adam Seiko.

He did it for two reasons. He wanted to reward Butler

and Gomez for big games at Utah State. And, perhaps more importantly, he knew it wouldn’t sow discord in the ranks.

Arop and Seiko? Instead of pouting, they each had career highs of 14 points on a combined 10 of 12 shooting. Seiko also had a career-best five assists.

“They’re both wired the right way,” Dutcher said. “You know, if they were kids with attitudes and came from that kind of thinking, they might not be able to respond. But both these kids want to win and they both play at a high level, whether that’s starting or coming off the bench.”

Arop started six of the first seven games, then again last week at Utah State. Seiko had started the last six.

“Mentally, I had some checking to do for myself for a couple of days,” Seiko said. “But I believe in all my teammates and I’m happy for my teammates. I’m happy for Lamont, I’m happy for TGO, because I don’t doubt that they can go in there and do a great job. I just have to stay level-headed, know I trust my teammates and my teammates trust me.”

The value of that mentality wasn’t lost on Jordan Schakel, who has started all 14 games this season and 61 in his career.

“It’s just a testament to their character and who they are, putting the team first,” Schakel said. “To come out and both of them have great games, that’s big time. It just brings the team closer together and shows that you really do have each other’s back. We can talk all we want, but to just have guys that are really about the right things, I think is a testament to this program and the guys that the coaches recruit.

“They’re high-character guys, and on nights like this it really pays dividends.”

3. Un-adjusting

The postgame virtual news conference by Air Force was not your ordinary fare from a team that trailed by 52 and lost by 37, filled with platitudes about the opponent and promises of a better effort next time.

Coach Joe Scott essentially blamed the first-half performance, when the Falcons trailed 52-16, “on myself,” cryptically saying he “did some things preparation-wise that weren’t the right things and it blatantly

Adam Seiko