San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
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AZTECS MAKE 11 3-POINTERS EN ROUTE TO VICTORY OVER REBELS AT THOMAS & MACK
It has become a tradition at the conclusion of pregame warmups for players to gather around the basket and pretend to film while Keshad Johnson flies down the lane for one of his gravity-defying dunks.
He did it Saturday afternoon before San Diego State’s game at UNLV. And missed.
Johnson grabbed the ball, ran back behind the 3point line and tried again while the finger cameras were rolling. Missed again. An omen?
Nope.
The problem was he was too close. SDSU was far more effective from deep, making eight 3s in the first half alone to take a 14-point lead and hanging on for a 76-67 win in front of 7,249 at UNLV’S Thomas & Mack Center and a national television audience on CBS. As expected.
The Aztecs (11-3, 2-0) have now won 19 of 21 against the Rebels at any venue and 13 of the last 14 at the Mack. Counting the Mountain West Tournament, it was their 42nd win here since 2008-09, most in the nation over that period at a non-home venue.
There may not be more of a sure thing in a town built on chance.
“A nice road victory,” coach Brian Dutcher said, smiling.
But as comfortable as things were for the first 32 minutes, when the net was dancing and the lead was 14, they inevitably tightened down the stretch. The Aztecs managed only six secondhalf baskets and coughed up 21 turnovers, and the Rebels inched within nine, seven, five points.
It was a six-point game with two minutes left when Darrion Trammell plunged in the dagger, a straightaway 3, fittingly, several feet beyond the line.
Only three of Division I’s 363 programs allow teams to attempt a higher percentage of their shots from behind the arc than UNLV, which you’d think is a reasonable strategy against SDSU, which not long ago ranked near the bottom nationally in 3-point accuracy. But the Aztecs returned from Christmas break and went 11 of 23 against Air Force on Wednesday, then went 11 of 21 Saturday.
Maybe it’s Penny the puppy. Matt Bradley credited, in part, getting the fluff ball over the break to his 27 points on six 3s against Air Force. He made five more against the Rebels for 23 points.
The math: He’s 11 of 17 (64.7 percent) behind the arc in the last two games.
“That sets the table for everybody else,” Dutcher said. “Matt stepped up again and looks like the MVP of the conference. Now the key is, can he keep that level of performance moving forward, and I think he can.”
Said Bradley: “My mind and everything is the right place. Finals are done, I’m out of school, I had a really good (Christmas) break, all of things went well for me and it created a lot of positivity coming back to basketball. It caused me to have that final drive going forward through the season.
“And the fans, coaches, everybody has been great. They stuck with me through it all.”
They needed it, too. The Aztecs got no baskets from Johnson, Nathan Mensah and Jaedon Ledee in a combined 52 minutes, and Lamont Butler, while shooting 4 of 5, was in foul trouble most of the afternoon and played a season-low, assist-less 15 minutes. There also was the matter of 21 turnovers, something Dutcher said they absolutely “can’t do” against a team with the nation’s second-best turnover margin (plus-eight per game).
But the Aztecs prevailed in the tactical chess match. The initial plan was to throw it into the post, draw UNLV’S usual double team and quickly reverse the ball for an open shot. UNLV’S wrinkle was that it didn’t double, and Dutcher adjusted by running a new screen-androll play with Trammell that he installed Friday.
That collapsed the defense and resulted in several open looks from 3. The Aztecs were 8 of 14 in the first half. Bradley had four of them.
Trammell finished with 21 points on 4-of-5 shooting on 3s to go with a game-high eight rebounds (at 5-foot-10) and five assists. The real revelation was Aguek Arop, who had 12 points (6-of-7 shooting) in 23 minutes, both season highs. He was the first choice to replace Johnson when he picked up two quick fouls in the first half and a third moments into the second.
In the end, though, it always comes back to the D in SDSU, and it did once again at Thomas & Mack.
“I thought after a really, really good offensive first half, our defense carried us in the second half when we struggled to score,” Dutcher said. “We didn’t let them get back in the game completely. They obviously cut into the lead, but we never gave up the lead and then we eventually had a spurt created by our defense.”
Dutcher didn’t even have to use the 1-3-1 zone they had prepped, the base man-toman was so suffocating.
“Any time you finish a game like that with San Diego State, you’re probably going to pat them on the back,” said UNLV coach Kevin Kruger, whose team shot 37.3 percent and ended a streak of eight games scoring 71 or more. “They’re elite defensively. They’re just so in sync, so solid. They don’t make mistakes. The plan is simple but not easy when you talk about trying to score on San Diego State, especially in the halfcourt. It’s really tough.
“They cover for each other, fight and scrap for each other. They’re certainly as good as we’ve played this year and about as good (defensively) as anyone in the country — certainly from what I’ve seen.”
The Rebels (11-3, 0-2), meanwhile, lost for the third time in four games and now go The Pit to face undefeated New Mexico.
“We didn’t get it done today,” said UNLV guard Luis Rodriguez, who had 24 points before fouling out. “With this sport, you really have to have a short memory. … We’re not off to the start we want, but we don’t want to get discouraged because we know the team we are and the group of guys we’ve got and how resilient we are as a team. I’m sure we’ll turn this thing back around.”
Notable
The team flew to Las Vegas on Friday on Southwest but sent a bus anyway and used it to drive back immediately after the game, trying to beat a winter storm expected to hit later that night.
• The Aztecs now have a midweek bye before playing at Wyoming on Saturday afternoon, also on CBS.
• SDSU compensated for the 21 turnovers with a 39-28 advantage on the boards and 20-8 in bench scoring.
• They ended a stretch of 113 straight minutes without trailing, which went back the first half against Kennesaw State on Dec. 12. Even so, they led for 31:10 on Saturday.
• Elijah Harkless, UNLV’S leading scorer, had 18 points but shot 6 of 19 overall and 2 of 10 on 3s. Keshon Gilbert, its second leading scorer, was back in the starting lineup but had just one point in 28 minutes. He came off the bench in Wednesday’s overtime loss at San Jose State after getting stuck in St. Louis by the national travel disruptions and not rejoining the team until the day of the game.
• The Rebels were without Colorado transfer forward Luis Parquet, who is injured.
• UNLV was 13 of 15 at the line but had 14 fewer attempts than the Aztecs, who made 19, many of them in the final minutes when the Rebels fouled intentionally.