FURMAN COACH: SDSU NOT MID-MAJOR

San Diego State is headed to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 after beating a pair of mid-major opponents.

But don’t call the Aztecs a mid-major program or, if you do, don’t disparage midmajors.

That’s the take of Furman coach Bob Richey after the Aztecs dispatched his 13th-seeded Paladins 75-52 at Orlando’s Amway Center on Saturday and now jump into the deep water against the SEC’S Alabama or Big Ten’s Maryland in Louisville, Ky.

“I don’t think San Diego State is a mid-major team, I really don’t,” Richey said. “They’ve got high-major length and size. They play extremely hard. When you look at the league, when you look at the Mountain West and how they schedule, the resources they put in … when you look at their model, it really is pretty close to a high-major model.

“I don’t know anybody in their program. I don’t know how they operate. But I’m telling you this, like, they don’t look at themselves as a mid-major. Watching them on film, they’re very wellcoached, they’re very disciplined. They know who they are, and they know what they’re about.

“They could advance as far as they want in this thing because of how physical they are, how they defend and how they rebound.”

No Mountain West Conference team has gone past the Sweet 16. Not the Kawhi Leonard teams at SDSU, not the Jimmer Fredette teams at BYU nor Andrew Bogut teams at Utah when they were in the conference, not coach Lon Kruger’s UNLV teams, not coach Eric Musselman’s Nevada team that survived the first weekend in 2018 before losing to Cinderella Loyola of Chicago.

Richey noted that eight of the 32 teams reaching the weekend this year (and the round of 32) don’t come from college basketball’s six power conferences. At least three will reach the Sweet 16 between SDSU and the Ivy League’s Princeton in the South Region and either Florida Atlantic or Fairleigh Dickinson in the East.

“Mid-majors are showing they belong in this thing,” said Richey, whose Paladins came from 12 points down to knock off fourth-seeded Virginia of the ACC here Thursday.

“I don’t want to get into an analytical (explanation) of how this thing is harder to get in because you don’t get rewarded for winning and you get just absolutely pummeled for losing (in lowerprofile leagues).”

Example: The Paladins lost a Southern Conference game against unfancied Western Carolina and dropped 20 spots overnight in the NET metric. They closed the season by winning 15 of 16 and climbed only 23.

That limits your metric upward mobility and makes it harder to get at-large invitations to the NCAA Tournament, especially compared to power conference teams that can keep their metrics strong with a more robust schedule in January and February.

Only five of the 36 at-large bids came from outside power conferences.

“What the mid majors are showing right now is we do belong,” Richey said. “I’m hoping that the country can continue to see that. I love what (Virginia coach Tony Bennett) said the other day in his press conference, that great basketball has no level and has no limit, and I’m a big subscriber to that.

“I wish the college basketball world would subscribe to that.”

Tourney trouble

The Aztecs did what a growing number of teams this year cannot: win their conference tournament and reach the Sweet 16.

Tournament champions from the Pac-12 (Arizona), Big Ten (Purdue), ACC (Duke) and American Athletic Conference (Memphis) are all already out. Of the 32 Division I basketball conferences, 23 tournament champions out.

SDSU has won seven Mountain West tournament titles, but this is only the second time they’ve won an NCAA game after doing so.

Catching fire

Junior Micah Parrish had not exactly been shredding the nets of late. Over the previous five games, he was shooting 9 of 37 overall (24.3 percent) and 5 of 21 behind the 3-point arc. In the Mountain West Tournament final, he was 1 of 9 and 0 of 7.

He missed his first two shots Saturday and had a turnover ... and had 14 points by halftime, and a gamehigh 16 total. It was his most prodigious scoring effort since 19 against Kennesaw State on Dec. 12.

“It was really my teammates finding me in transition,” Parrish said. “We just try to find an open guy. Each game might not be your game, but I guess today was mine, and my teammates just kept finding me.”

Notable

The officiating crew: Mike Reed, Pat Adams and Tony Chiazza. Adams (SEC) and Chiazza (Big East) had no prior familiarity with the Aztecs. Reed, however, did. He is based on the West Coast and worked six SDSU games this season, most recently the win against San Jose State in the Mountain West Tournament semifinals. (He also was the lead official at Utah State, when Trammell was controversially ejected in the first half.)

• Lamont Butler became the second SDSU player with at least 12 points, six rebounds and six assists in an NCAA tourney game. The other is Richie Williams in ’06 in a loss against Indiana.

• The previous largest margin of victory for SDSU in the NCAA Tournament was 19 against North Dakota State in 2014, when they also reached the Sweet 16.

• Furman’s Mike Bothwell finished with 15 points, three under his average.

Jalen Slawson, who averages 15.8, finished with eight.

JP Pegues had 10 points but on 3 of 15 shooting.

• Matt Bradley had the best plus/minus at plus-27 points with him on the floor. Bothwell was minus-24.