San Diego State rallies to make another Mountain West final — PHOTOS
Even one of the strongest fields in Mountain West men’s basketball tournament history couldn’t find a way to keep San Diego State from reaching the championship game.
The fifth-seeded Aztecs overcame a 17-point first-half deficit to knock off top-seeded and No. 18-ranked Utah State 86-70 on Friday night at the Thomas & Mack Center to advance to their 10th title game in the past 11 years.
“This team has always had great resolve,” San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher said. “It’s got a great grit about it. We got down 17 in the first half, and we didn’t panic. We just fight our way, fight, fight, fight, and we caught some breaks.”
San Diego State (24-9) will play in Saturday’s 3 p.m. championship game against No. 6-seeded New Mexico (25-9), which got 19 points, eight assists and five rebounds from Jaelen House in a 74-61 win over seventh-seeded Colorado State (24-10) in the nightcap.
It didn’t look like it was going to happen for the Aztecs early on.
Star forward Jaedon LeDee picked up his second foul before the media timeout and went to the bench, enabling the Aggies (27-6) to sprint out to a 34-17 advantage.
Dutcher made the calculated risk of putting LeDee back in the game with 8:27 left in the first half, and San Diego State started to chip away. The Aztecs then went on a big run when Utah State star Great Osobor picked up his second foul two minutes later.
“We put them both in with two fouls, and it kind of turned the momentum of the game,” Dutcher said. “Because at that time, Osobor was out, so we could go to Jaedon, and Osobor wasn’t guarding him. I don’t know if he scored a lot, but he drew fouls and changed the momentum of the game.”
Like he did in a 74-71 overtime win over UNLV on Thursday, Darrion Trammell hit a 3-pointer at the first-half buzzer that gave San Diego State momentum going into intermission.
Once again, it sparked the Aztecs in the second half.
Trammell’s shot cut the halftime deficit to 39-36 and left San Diego State feeling good about itself heading back to the locker room.
The Aztecs stretched the lead throughout the second half and were never really threatened. LeDee finished with 22 points and eight rebounds in 25 minutes before fouling out.
“We had a good stretch to finish the half, which we needed to get back into the game,” Dutcher said. “Then the second half we came out, played good Aztec basketball and guarded. We outrebounded them. Defensive rebounds are going to win championships. That’s what we preach and believe in. I thought we guarded and rebounded at a high level.”
San Diego State also got 16 points from Lamont Butler and 15 from Micah Parrish in the win.
The supporting cast stepping up, along with the trademark defense and rebounding advantages, is one of the major reasons the Aztecs have had so much postseason success.
This return to the title game comes in a field that could include six NCAA Tournament teams, but the formula has remained the same.
“I don’t think we have to rely on our offense to win,” Dutcher said of why his program has so much success in March. “We can suffer through a bad offensive performance and hang in the game long enough and give ourselves a chance to win at the end. I tell the guys, ‘At some point we’re going to find something that works (offensively).’ It may not work for the first half. It may not work for three-quarters of the game, but we’ll find something to put it in. We have to hang in the game long enough until we find that thing that works. Until then, we rely on our defense and our rebounding.”
It also helps to have a pair of guards who carried the Aztecs to not only the Mountain West title last season, but the NCAA Tournament championship game.
Butler and Trammell handled the ball the majority of the time for a team that turned the ball over just five times all game and allowed the Aggies to turn those into just two points.
“Lamont and Darrion are great,” said Dutcher, whose team is 3-6 in its last nine conference title game appearances. “They’re Final Four starting guards. They should be good. They’re used to playing this time of the year.”
Osobor had 19 points and five rebounds for Utah State, which won the regular-season crown and is almost certainly going to be included when the NCAA Tournament field is announced Sunday.
“Any time you lose, it shows what you need to work on,” Utah State coach Danny Sprinkle said. “We still have to clean some things up, even though it’s March, like every team. Going into this tournament, we’re going to have to be running on a high level if we want to have a chance because every team we play from here on out is going to be a great team. It will be similar to a Mountain West-type schedule. Every night, there’s no days off. We’ll have to clean up a lot of things offensively with kind of our flow and our pace, and we’ve got to be tougher on the boards.”
Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.
