LAS VEGAS — San Diego State had won 17 straight quarterfinal games at the Mountain West men’s basketball tournament, an incredible feat.
The Aztecs did not make it 18, a potentially costly slip.
The 62-52 loss against Boise State on Thursday afternoon at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center doesn’t automatically mean they’re out of the NCAA Tournament. But it does mean the next couple days until the Selection Show will be an uneasy, anxious helpless experience.
There’s nothing they can do now but wait, watch and hope.
Wait until 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon.
Watch other teams on the proverbial bubble play in their conference tournaments.
Hope they lose.
“Right before tip,” SDSU coach Brian Dutcher opened his postgame news conference, “I had my third granddaughter born back in San Diego, so I’m happy about that. At least something makes you happy.”
Most of the bubble had been falling their way, with losses by Ohio State, Indiana and Xavier. But Texas A&M blowing a late lead in overtime — and then the game in double OT — against bubble resident Texas is the kind of result that will churn their stomachs. That came a couple hours after North Carolina, another bubble team, held off Wake Forest to keep its hopes alive.
The Aztecs (21-9) swept the regular-season series against Boise State (23-9), but couldn’t win a third time. And probably didn’t deserve to after an abysmal performance on the boards in their fifth game without 7-foot Magoon Gwath, the Mountain West Freshman of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year.
The Aztecs outscored the Broncos 49-44 on first-shot attempts. And were outscored 18-3 on second-chance points following offensive rebounds.
The Broncos had 13. The Aztecs had four.
“If I were just to read the numbers, our opponent shot 33% from the field and 27% from 3, I think we’d have a pretty good chance to win,” said Dutcher, whose team had a 28-game win streak when holding opponents under 35% overall. “But the thing we put on the board before the game, and the thing we said at halftime that had to happen, is we had to rebound. … Those second-chance opportunities were the difference in the game, and we didn’t get enough of them.”
Added guard Nick Boyd: “It’s on us to do something about it. Very frustrating. We just didn’t execute in that aspect of the game, and it ultimately cost us. … When you do things like that, you’re playing with fire, and that’s where we are right now.”
After not practicing since hyperextending his right knee on Feb. 22, Gwath came out of the tunnel wearing his No. 0 white jersey, pink sneakers and a black brace. He warmed up with the team, running, dribbling, shooting jumpers, working on post moves.
It was a nice decoy. He took a seat on the bench and never subbed in.
It also might have backfired in a most unexpected way.
Assuming Gwath would play, and knowing he blocked six shots in SDSU’s 64-47 win at Viejas Arena on Feb. 15, Broncos coach Leon Rice reasoned that attacking the rim again — doing the same thing, expecting a different result — would amount to “the definition of insanity.”
So they did the opposite. The team that shot a combined 10 of 48 behind the arc in the first two meetings jacked up 3s without conscience this time. Their first 11 shot attempts were all 3s. They finished with 40, tying the school single-game record. They took only 16 shots inside the arc, most of them after grabbing offensive rebounds under the hoop.
“Our style did not match up with their style defensively, so we had to adjust, and we had to make that work,” Rice said. “I think our target was between 36 and 50 3s, … but part of that was the offensive boards. You can’t shoot those if you’re going to stand around and watch them rebound it. We didn’t.
“That’s the way we had to beat them, and we knew it. We were not going to beat them going in there at the rim. … No square peg, round hole.”
It got to the point in practice this week that Rice admitted yelling at senior forward Tyson Degenhart for the first time in his career, for not taking an open 3.
Explained Rice: “I said, ‘No, that’s bull. Might as well just say that it’s selfish if you’re not going to shoot those. I have confidence in you. Every one of these players has confidence in you. If you’re not going to shoot them, come stand next to me.’ ”
Never mind that Degenhart was 0 of 10 behind the arc against SDSU this season, or that he missed his first two Thursday.
Degenhart finally made one late in the first half after the Aztecs had raced ahead 33-22. Point guard Alvaro Cardenas made another on the next possession, bringing the halftime margin to a more manageable five points.
Degenhart missed two more as the game rocked back and forth in the second half, one of them an air ball that wasn’t close.
Tied 49-49 with 5:42, he had fired another from almost the exact same spot. Splash.
The Broncos never trailed again.
“Our mindset was really when we have an open shot, we’re going to take it every time,” said Cardenas, who shot 4 of 13, all behind the arc. “Tyson, we believe in him to keep shooting the ball, and it shows his character because he airballed the one, and the play after he hits a 3.
“I’m not even trying to be funny, but that shows who he is. We talk about response all the time.”
The other problem: The Aztecs, as they have all season for endless stretches, suddenly went cold on offense. They had no baskets — like, zero — over the final nine minutes. Even when they got to the line, they struggled, going 3 of 8 down the stretch.
Second-half points: 19.
Boyd continued his torrid form, finishing with 20 points on 6 of 12 shooting. But no one else had more than seven, and the other two starting guards, Miles Byrd and BJ Davis, combined for 11 points on 3 of 17 shooting. Miles Heide, who made 17 straight shots and averaged 10.3 points in his four previous starts in place of Gwath, had no points and three rebounds in 32½ minutes.
Boise State had four players in double figures, led by 16 points from Cardenas, the San Jose State transfer who beat SDSU for the first time in nine career games.
“I thought it was just a perfect storm,” Cardenas said. “I had full belief that we were going to beat them today. It’s really, really hard to beat a team three times in a row.”
Notable
Boise State advances to play top-seeded New Mexico in the semifinals Friday night. SDSU is now 9-1 against the 5 seed in the Mountain West tournament and will not play in the final for the first time in Dutcher’s eight seasons as head coach.
• SDSU was projected as a 68-67 winner by the predictive Kenpom metric, which is usually what the sports books follow. However, Vegas oddsmakes installed Boise State as a 1.5-point favorite that was bet up to 2.5 points by tipoff, an indication that most folks were banking on a Broncos victory.
• Boise State switched up its starting lineup from the last meeting, inserting O’Mar Stanley and freshman Pearson Carmichael for Emmanuel Ugbo and RJ Keene II.
• Jared Coleman-Jones had nine points and seven rebounds for SDSU. Davis had five rebounds, but no one else had more than three.
• SDSU blocked three shots, Boise State blocked four.
• The Broncos had only two fewer turnovers than the Aztecs (10 to 12) but a 19-8 edge on points off turnovers.
• The officials: Verne Harris, Kevin Brill and Tommy Nunez.
