Young and injured is generally not a recipe for success in college basketball, which makes San Diego State’s 72-67 victory at preseason No. 22 UCLA in a closed-door scrimmage Sunday afternoon all the more confounding and, if you’re an Aztecs fan, encouraging.
Brian Dutcher’s team was missing five scholarship players, including his projected starting backcourt of Nick Boyd and Reese Waters plus USD transfer Wayne McKinney. That left him with eight healthy bodies, six of whom are freshmen or sophomores.
One of those sophomores, however, was guard BJ Davis, who embraced the next-man-up opportunity by torching the Bruins for 28 points on 8 of 9 shooting overall and 6 of 7 behind the 3-point arc. He also had six rebounds, second most on the team, in 34 minutes.
Consider: Davis had 14 total points all of his freshman season in 67 minutes across 12 games.
“Twenty-eight points is a big number, I don’t care where you’re playing,” Dutcher said. “If you’re playing in a high school game, 28 points is a big number. He put up a big number. BJ stepped up in a really big way.
“He made shots, but he made shots where he wasn’t hunting it and the ball just found him and he wasn’t afraid. He stepped up and knocked them down. And he had to deal with full-court pressure for 40 minutes. That’s hard. He had to be worn out at the end.”
The good news is there’s still plenty of film to learn from, starting with 24 turnovers by a program that typically averages half that. But the Aztecs compensated by shooting a sizzling 54.5 percent overall and 42.9 percent on 3s (9 of 21), plus a 35-27 advantage on the boards and 26-6 in points in the paint while holding the Bruins to 34.5 percent shooting.
“I like that we were gritty and tough and found a way, that we stuck with it,” Dutcher said. “You shoot 54 percent and they shoot 34 percent. That’s what we do. We outrebounded them. That’s what we do. Those things were extremely positive. The 24 turnovers, we obviously know we can’t survive that in the regular season.”
UCLA led for nearly 31 minutes of the game and was still up five inside eight minutes to go. SDSU responded with a 9-0 run on baskets by four different players to take a 61-57 lead.
Miles Heide, who has been battling knee tendinitis and was questionable to go, had a three-point play on a screen and roll with Davis for a dunk with 53 seconds left in a one-point game. Davis sealed it with his sixth 3 with 16 seconds to go.
Redshirt 7-foot freshman Magoon Gwath was the only other Aztecs player in double figures with 10 points, though he turned the ball over eight times. Miles Byrd had nine points and seven rebounds in 35 minutes, and Middle Tennessee transfer forward Jared Coleman-Jones had seven and five.
SDSU started Davis, Byrd, Gwath, Coleman-Jones and true freshman Taj DeGourville – two freshmen, two sophomores and a senior. Heide and Mountain West preseason freshman of the year Pharaoh Compton were the bigs off the bench, and Brown transfer Kimo Ferrari was the only guard in reserve.
It is dangerous, Dutcher will be the first to tell you, to draw many conclusions from October scrimmages in an empty arena without television cameras or screaming student sections. The Aztecs have won big against ranked teams before and then struggled when the season started. They’ve also lost in scrimmages, as they did two years ago against UCLA after trailing 18-2, and reached the Final Four.
Dutcher went with an eight-man rotation out of necessity. UCLA coach Mick Cronin had the opposite problem, with nearly a full roster that he equitably divided minutes among in a series of planned substitutions. In all, 11 Bruins played and just one more than 22 minutes.
Sebastian Mack led them with 15 points in 20 minutes off the bench. USC transfer Kobe Johnson added 10 points and eight rebounds. Aday Mara, their 7-3 Spanish center, is hurt and didn’t suit up.
“You’re disted somewhat when you do that,” Dutcher said of Cronin’s substitution pattern. “They had fresh legs and they pressured us for 40 minutes – I mean, really pressured us. But they didn’t get in a real rhythm like they would in a real game. He’s not playing that many guys in a real game. That’s not happening.”
The goal now for the Aztecs will be twofold before the Nov. 6 opener at Viejas Arena against a UC San Diego team that nearly beat them last season: Cut down the turnovers, and get healthy.
Boyd spent nearly three months in a protective boot after a summer foot injury but is expected to be cleared for full action in the coming week and play in the Oct. 30 preseason exhibition against Division II Cal State San Marcos. Waters has a foot issue that has sidelined him the past two weeks. McKinney is nursing a reaggravation of a hamstring injury that sidelined him for the team’s first intrasquad scrimmage (but not the second).
Also not available Sunday were junior Demarshay Johnson Jr. and 7-foot freshman Thokbor Majak.
“I’ll feel better when we have all our pieces together and I know what we have as a team,” Dutcher said. “I told them when we got in the locker room afterward that my talk would have been the same whether we won or lost it. We have a stepping-off point to see where we need to get better, see what we need to work on. That’s why we do it.
“The result is fine, but it’s a scrimmage.”
Nwuli picks Rutgers
The final uncommitted recruit that SDSU had targeted from the high school class of 2025 is off the board after 6-7 wing Chris Nwuli from Sierra Canyon High School in Chatsworth orally committed to Rutgers on Sunday.
Nwuli, a four-star prospect from Las Vegas who is close friends with DeGourville and Compton, had SDSU in an initial list of six finalists that did not include Rutgers. But he took a surprise campus visit there a few weeks ago and is believed to have received a large NIL offer.
“I feel like I had already made my decision and (assistant coach Marlon ‘Smoke’ Williamson) was wondering if my recruitment was still open,” Nwuli told the Asbury Park Press. “I wanted to hear him out because I always wanted to come to the East Coast.”
The Aztecs had four recruits visit campus in August and September and landed one: 6-7 forward Tae Simmons from Heritage Christian in Northridge. Two others committed elsewhere: Isaac Carr to Wake Forest and Josiah Sanders to Colorado.
