San Diego State keeps NCAA Tournament hopes alive

Where once there was enough electricity at the Mountain West basketball tournament semifinals to turn those big generator rotors at Hoover Dam, San Diego State and UNR rubbed sticks together Friday night at the Thomas & Mack Center, trying to spark interest in what has become a moribund event.

Only the Aztecs succeeded.

San Diego State won 90-73, and it wasn’t that close. The Aztecs once led by 34 points — in the first half. They made the big generator rotors purr again, at least for one night.

They also qualified for their record 10th Mountain West title game and fourth in five years at 3 p.m. Saturday against New Mexico, which defeated Utah State 83-68 in the second semifinal. The fifth-seeded Aztecs are the lowest seed to qualify for the final since Wyoming advanced as a No. 7 in 2006.

It was SDSU’s second victory over UNR in six days, but nobody could have predicted the ease with which it won. That includes Nostradamus, Joe Lunardi, Ken Pomeroy and Brian Dutcher, the Aztecs’ first-year coach.

“You know when you start making shots like that, the basket gets the size of the ocean,” said Dutcher, whose team drained 61 percent of its field goal tries in the first half while getting in so many Wolf Pack faces that one would have thought Durga, the Hindu warrior goddess with 18 hands, was guarding the perimeter and three-second lane.

“Just real happy to have found a way to beat a really good Nevada team. They’re an NCAA Tournament team, there’s no question about it.”

San Diego State improved to 3-1 against Top 25 teams, having also beaten Gonzaga. As well as the Aztecs (21-10) have been playing down the stretch, they’ll probably still have to cut down the nets Saturday to reach the NCAA Tournament for the seventh time in nine seasons.

The Aztecs won their eighth straight game with a defensive effort so stifling that one would have thought Steve Fisher still was coaching the team.

Fisher was in the house. It wasn’t hard to pick him out amid the thousands of empty seats. He was watching the Aztecs hoop it up in the grandest of styles from a front-row seat just above the media section barricade, baseline extended.

When SDSU shot out to a 21-9 lead and 22nd-ranked UNR requested time, Aztecs supporters responded with the first of many standing ovations.

Fisher was the only one sitting, for it was never his style to gloat. When somebody tugged at his elbow, he smiled for a brief moment. If one blinked, one missed it.

What you couldn’t miss was how the Aztecs were climbing all over the Pack on the defensive end. They were in UNR’s collective grill, and it was shaping up as a Fisher style of game.

At halftime, the Pack had 25 points. That definitely smacked of Fisher.

San Diego State had 55. That definitely did not.

“Thought San Diego State came out from the get-go the first half, played phenomenal basketball,” said Eric Musselman, coach of the top-seeded Wolf Pack. “Free throws attempted is the difference in the basketball game.”

That was Musselman’s story and he was sticking to it, though he did credit the Aztecs for applying pressure and drawing fouls.

“Surprisingly, we took 14 more shots and still couldn’t get to the line,” he said.

It wouldn’t have mattered if they did. Free throws don’t matter when you’re down by 30.

San Diego State still was diving for loose balls when it was 66-33 with 12 minutes to play. The Aztecs were the hungrier team, it seemed. They got to virtually all of the 50-50 balls first, and a lot of the 25-75 ones as well.

The Pack made a little spurt at the end, but that was mostly because SDSU let off the gas and UNR continued trapping until the final 30 seconds.

But really, what more can be said about a game like this?

That had it been roller derby, they would have called off the jam?

That had it been a prizefight, they would have thrown in the towel?

That had it been curling … well, I’m not exactly sure what they would have done had it been curling. But it probably would have been a lot more interesting to watch.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.