Three thoughts on San Diego State’s 100-97 overtime win against Washington on Sunday night in the championship game of the Continental Tire Main Event at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas:
1. Rankings rankling
Wait. SDSU isn’t ranked?
Twelve hours after the Aztecs posted their third impressive win of the week — beating Long Beach State three days before it won at Michigan, blowing out preseason No. 23 Saint Mary’s by 25, hitting the century mark against Washington and its collection of fifth-year seniors, including a pair of Kentucky transfers — the two major polls released their weekly rankings.
SDSU moved up only two spots in the Associated Press media poll, from No. 31 to 29 (and still out of the top 25).
The Aztecs dropped four spots in the USA Today coaches poll, from No. 28 to 32.
“It’s early in the year,” SDSU coach Brian Dutcher said. “You’re going to have those moments. We’re five games in.”
He was talking about his team and its foibles against the press, but it applies to the polls. They’re going to have those moments.
The first problem: There shouldn’t be polls before Christmas, maybe even Martin Luther King Day in mid-January. There are 362 men’s basketball programs in Division I, and the sample size is too small and the wild disparity in nonconference scheduling too great to accurately access a team’s proper standing until they play a few conference games, preferably some on the road.
The next problem: Sunday night college basketball is rare, and AP ballots must be submitted by 7 a.m. PST Monday. SDSU-Washington finished about 12:40 a.m. EST, and many voters likely went to bed with their ballots completed. The coaches’ poll is due even earlier.
Another problem: There isn’t much movement in the Top 25 this time of year, with power conference teams devouring cupcakes in home “buy” games and not testing themselves until Thanksgiving or Christmas tournaments.
So you have 3-0 Colorado at No. 18 in AP on the back of home wins at altitude against Towson (No. 188 in the Kenpom.com metric), Grambling State (318) and Milwaukee (257). And 3-0 North Carolina at No. 14 after home wins against Radford (172), Lehigh (248) and UC Riverside (263).
And James Madison, which is No. 89 in Kenpom, is at No. 22 in AP because it won at preseason No. 4 Michigan State.
How much teams are penalized for losses varies widely in November before stabilizing later in the season.
SDSU plummeted 14 spots for losing in altitude at BYU in a game they were two-point underdogs according to computer metrics and Vegas oddsmakers. Yet Arkansas dropped only six spots, from No. 14 to 20, after losing at home against UNC Greensboro; and USC dropped only seven, from No. 16 to 23, after losing at home to UC Irvine.
In all, four ranked teams lost to unranked opposition last week and just two — Villanova and Illinois — dropped out of the AP top 25. Mississippi State and Virginia, both undefeated with top 50 wins and Kenpom metrics better than the Aztecs, replaced them.
SDSU improved slightly, garnering 77 voting points compared to 33 the week before and appearing on 18 of 61 ballots, up eight. Just not enough to crack the Top 25.
Dutcher and his staff are no doubt smiling. Next up on the schedule is a certified “trap” game, against a 2-2 Cal team Saturday afternoon in the unknown of a 2,000-seat high school gym in San Juan Capistrano. They’ll welcome the motivation.
2. The broken press break
It is easy to blame the deficiencies in SDSU’s press break for a 12-point lead inside five minutes left (and seven inside a minute left) disappearing like a stack of chips at a craps table. And there are deficiencies — continually inbounding into the coffin corner that welcomes traps, the inbounder not running the baseline robustly enough, a lack of variety in press offense schemes.
“Going against press,” Dutcher said, “you can watch 100 games and most of those teams are going to end up with the ball in the corner somehow — and (it becomes) how are they going to get it out of there? The only way not to get it there sometimes, you can run plays to throw deep and try to score a basket. But with the lead, I didn’t want to take that kind of risk.
“I just wanted to get it in, be strong with the ball, try to get fouled and make free throws.”
It got so bad that, on Washington’s final possession of overtime, Dutcher and his staff decided against their usual practice of intentionally fouling up three inside 10 seconds to go — trading two free throws for the chance of surrendering a game-tying 3 — for fear that they’d have to inbound against the press again.
Lost, though, in a five-second count and a pair of jump balls from traps in the corner — the second of which gave Washington the ball down one with 6.1 seconds left — were two other issues that perhaps had bigger roles in the Huskies’ improbable comeback that forced overtime (and nearly won it in regulation).
One is that they sprung the press relatively early, with more than three minutes remaining. SDSU broke the press four straight times and, instead of attacking what often was a two-on-one situation, opted to pull out the ball, run clock and get fouled. That’s standard procedure in the final minute, but Dutcher admitted it might have been too early to sacrifice offensive aggression.
“Usually teams that press us that late, we’re just trying to hold the ball,” Dutcher said. “But they were pressing with three or four minutes to go. There were times where we were undecided if we wanted to attack or not attack.”
The other issue was at the other end. Washington scored on its final five possessions of regulation and 10 of the last 11. Not wanting to foul and let the Huskies score with the clock stopped, the Aztecs suddenly lost their defensive edge and allowed one easy shot at the rim after another.
Metrics say the Huskies would have scored 12 or 13 points on those 11 possessions in the final 4½ minutes. They got 19.
3. A monster
Here’s the award haul for Jaedon LeDee after his career night of 34 points and 17 rebounds:
Tournament MVP, Mountain West player of the week, and national player of the week honors from ESPN, Andy Katz’s NCAA March Madness and College Insider’s Lute Olson awards.
Easy choice.
In three games, all wins, he averaged 28.7 points and 12.0 rebounds per game while shooting 57.1 percent from the field and 84.8 percent from the free-throw line. In addition, he had seven assists, six steals and a block, and drew 24 fouls that led to 33 free throws (18 against Washington).
He now leads the nation in scoring at 26.8 points and is top 25 in rebounding at 10.6. He currently is third in Kenpom’s player of the year ratings behind a pair of 7-footers, Purdue’s Zach Edey and Kansas’ Hunter Dickinson.
LeDee’s averages through his first four college seasons: 5.1 points and 3.6 rebounds in 118 games, only four of which he started.
“Jaedon is a monster,” Dutcher said. “He was capable of doing that last year. I told everybody he was and (that) I’m the one who held him back, because we had other good players, too, and he had to play a different role.
“I mean, he’s not really a big man. He’s big and strong, but he’s super skilled. You see him off the dribble, shooting mid-range jumpers, shooting the 3. But he’s strong inside, too. He’s hard to guard because he’s versatile. He can do a lot of things. That’s going to make him very dangerous for our opponents this year.”
The Huskies were dutifully impressed.
Coach Mike Hopkins: “He’s a heck of a player. He’s probably one of the hottest players in America … (and) they do a good job of finding him and getting him into positions where he can score.”
Senior forward Keion Brooks Jr.: “He was a tough cover for us. Maybe next time — I don’t know if we’ll see him again — (we can) try to get the ball out of his hands and shake it up a little bit. But when someone has it going like that, sometimes you’ve just got to tip your hat to him and tell him, ‘Good game.’”
