BYU coach Mark Pope was asked earlier this week about the annual game against San Diego State.
“Every year this turns into an epic battle,” Pope said. “It’s a street fight from the tip, and it turns into a great basketball game.”
Epic battle, street fight, great game. Check, check and check.
The Cougars won this one, 74-65 before a big crowd at the raucous Marriott Center on Friday night to hand the No. 17 Aztecs only their second loss against a team not named Connecticut in their last 18 games.
In the eyes of Las Vegas and the leading computer metric, it wasn’t an upset. BYU, which at 34 is only 10 spots behind SDSU in the Kenpom metric, was a 2-point favorite.
A team not accustomed to losing will nonetheless rue missed free throws and missed opportunities, knowing they had leads in both halves. But there also was the reality playing with a suddenly depleted roster at altitude, down to eight scholarship players at one point – and that included two true freshmen, a transfer new to the system and a guy who hadn’t played for a month.
The result: Two guys played 32 minutes and another played 36 — huge amounts for a sea-level team that the Aztecs typically try to mitigate.
“We were a little short-handed,” coach Brian Dutcher said, “but if that’s how minutes you’ve got to play, you’ve got to play as hard as you can for those minutes. It’s hard at altitude, but it’s what I felt we needed to do there.”
Added Lamont Butler, who logged 32: “We knew we have to toughen up and gut it out. I thought we did for the most part, but at the end of the day in some stretches we didn’t get it done.”
The killer moment came with 3:38 left in a four-point game and Campbell transfer Jay Pal at the line shooting one-and-one. He missed … and Reese Waters compounded the problem by fouling BYU’s Richie Saunders on the rebound.
The Cougars were in the bonus, and Saunders made both. A Dallin Hall jumper on their next possession made it an eight-point spread — too much on this night for a visibly exhausted SDSU starting unit to dent.
Jaedon LeDee led the Aztecs (1-1) with 21 points and six rebounds in 32 minutes, but he struggled down the stretch and had no rebounds in the second half. Reese Waters had 15 points in a game-high 36 minutes at altitude. Lamont Butler had nine points, but none after intermission.
“We got paint touches that we didn’t take advantage of,” Dutcher said. “Lamont got in there a lot, and things have to happen when he gets in there. It’s got to be foul, it’s got to be a basket or it’s got to be a kick-out assist. Because he got in the paint for us. We just didn’t seem to generate any offense off that.”
Butler, who missed all six of his second-half shot attempts, agreed.
“I feel like I got in the paint at will,” he said. “I just have to finish those. Contact or not, they didn’t call a foul. You have to finish.”
The Aztecs actually outshot the Cougars, 45 to 43 percent. But the hosts compensated by making 37 percent of their 3s while making 10 of them and crushed SDSU on the boards, 42-32. The Cougars (2-0) also got 18 points – 16 in the second half – from back-up guard Dallin Hall.
The Aztecs got Darrion Trammell back after missing nearly five weeks with a re-aggravated shoulder injury, wearing a sleeve on his left shoulder and coming off the bench for seven points in 21 minutes. But they scratched Miles Byrd (hip) and Damarshay Johnson Jr. (shoulder) before tip, and two others — Cade Alger (broken nose) and freshman Magoon Gwath (ankle surgery) — were already out.
The new math: Nine (of 13) scholarship players in uniform.
Then, midway through the first half, Parrish dislocated a finger on his right (non-shooting) hand while reaching for the ball and waved to the officials to stop the game. He went immediately to the locker room, and the Aztecs were momentarily down to eight.
They took early leads of 7-0 and 15-10, but the problem was always going to be what happened when 4,650 feet of elevation began exacting a toll on the starters’ lungs and legs.
Or, put another way: When Dutcher was forced to go to his bench, or what was left of it.
The lull eventually came, a 6½ minute stretch with no baskets and four turnovers. An 18-17 lead became a 29-20 deficit.
But SDSU kept in contact thanks to back-to-back-to-back baskets and back-to-back-to-back BYU turnovers late in the half, closing to 33-28. A couple minutes into the second half, Saunders got his second breakaway dunk in as many minutes, and the Aztecs had the lead back.
The inevitable lull came again, though, and a 15-4 Cougars run pushed the margin back to seven. SDSU got it to two briefly but no closer.
“We expect to win,” Butler said. “When we lose it’s very disappointing, but we’re going to go back and get better from here.”
Notable
Next up: home Tuesday against Long Beach State, which was picked to finish second in the Big West … Saunders and Parrish both fouled out … The officiating crew was about as good as you can get: Keith Kimble, Kip Kissinger and Brooks Wells. Kimble and Kissinger had SDSU games in the Final Four last spring, Kimble in the national championship game against UConn, Kissinger the semi against Florida Atlantic. Kimble finished last season ranked No. 1 in the Kenpom metric’s referee ratings. Kissinger was No. 5 and Wells No. 40 …
• The No. 1-seeded BYU women’s soccer team was playing its first-round NCAA Tournament game across the street from the Marriott Center at the same time, beating Utah State 2-0 … During a first-half timeout, Cougars mascot Cosmo broke the (unofficial) world record for a dive roll off a trampoline, soaring 18½ feet to break the previous record of 14 feet set by the New Orleans Pelicans mascot … Saunders was guarding Saunders a few times during the game: SDSU’s Elijah and BYU’s Richie (no relation).
