It was probably only a matter of time before a young team with a new rotation crashed back to Earth like a satellite falling out of orbit, and it happened Saturday afternoon with a Fox national television audience witnessing the carnage.
“It’s going to sting for a little bit,” Miles Byrd said through eyes red from tears.
As spectacular as San Diego State looked through the opening 18 minutes en route to an 18-point lead against one-loss Utah State, the nation’s No. 20-ranked team looked stupefied after that and suffered its first real hiccup of the season, 67-66 at Viejas Arena on Tucker Anderson’s 3-pointer with 6.8 seconds left.
Tucker Anderson?
He’s a 6-foot-9 sophomore wing from Centerton, Ark., who spent last season at Central Arkansas. And entered the day averaging 5.0 points per game off the bench and shooting 20.5% behind the arc.
And had 14 points, including 3s on the Aggies’ final two possessions as they erased a seven-point deficit with, gulp, a mere 90 seconds to go.
“The poor kid has been struggling all year,” said Utah State coach Jerrod Calhoun, whose 12-1 Aggies won at Viejas Arena for the first time since ing the Mountain West in 2013-14 and snapped a 35-game SDSU win streak when leading at the half.
“I kid you not, he shoots two and three times a day in our gym. Our guys have been teasing him, like he’s a golfer with a hitch, maybe he needs a couple days off. But he kept at it. His mom was in the hospital earlier this week with (a cardiac issue). It’s just been a crazy couple weeks for this kid.”
A heartwarming story for folks in the Cache Valley, but little consolation for those in soldout Viejas Arena who late in the first half no doubt thought this would be a Saturday afternoon stroll in Balboa Park.
The score: SDSU 40, Utah State 22.
The score over the final 22 minutes: Utah State 45, SDSU 26.
The Aztecs (8-3, 1-1) completely lost the plot, as they’d say in England, flummoxed by Utah State’s halftime adjustments to its matchup zone, aimlessly ing across the perimeter before jacking up a contested jumper at the shot-clock buzzer on the occasion that it didn’t expire first.
Another British soccer phrase that applied: They ran out of ideas.
It was a shocking development after a free-flowing first half in which they compelled Calhoun to call timeout barely two minutes into a 7-0 game and had 43 points by intermission in all variety of ways – dunks, jump hooks, floaters, 3s, free throws.
During one timeout, Calhoun screamed at his team as the Viejas Arena crowd roared: “Don’t be intimidated by these (expletive) people. It’s a basketball game. Who cares about them? It’s like you’ve never played before.”
They started listening and playing unafraid, and the Aztecs became the group that looked like it had never played before.
An 18-point margin became 11 at the half, then seven, then three, then a one-point deficit, then back to 65-58 inside two minutes to go.
Then, disaster.
Complete, utter disaster.
Utah State’s Ian Martinez (17 points) sailed down the lane and ran over Byrd, but the officials whistled a block – much to the chagrin of soldout Viejas Arena after seeing a replay on the giant video boards. It was Byrd’s fifth foul, ending his day. Martinez scored on the play and made the ensuing free throw – 65-61.
The Aztecs raced to the other end and instead of running clock, Wayne McKinney III drove into the paint against a forest of defenders and missed a layup a mere seven seconds later. Anderson followed that with a 3, and it was a one-point game
Nick Boyd drew a foul with 51.9 seconds left, made the first free throw, missed the second but corralled his own rebound and called timeout. The Aztecs, though, looked lost again on offense, unable to create any open looks before BJ Davis heaved a deep 3 late in the shot clock that missed badly.
Calhoun its it.
“I almost screwed it up, to be honest: I was going to call timeout,” he said. “I’ll go to bed thinking, ‘Wow, I could have really screwed it up.’ But I didn’t.”
He didn’t only because Mason Falslev, his best player, had the ball and figured he’d make a good decision. He did, feeding Anderson on the right wing.
Swish.
At the other end, SDSU coach Brian Dutcher was madly trying to call timeout, but the officials curiously weren’t look his way (as they are instructed in those situations). He didn’t get it.
“Once it’s in,” Dutcher said, “then you know what it is: Six seconds, go to the basket, get to the rim, make them call a foul.”
McKinney, the USD transfer who was on the floor in crunch time for the first time this season, didn’t. He dribbled down the right side instead of the middle — “I thought Wayne was a little indecisive, not sure what he wanted to do,” Dutcher said — and settled for a contested 3 that never really had a chance.
Buzzer.
Silence.
Aggies galloping on the floor in celebration.
The Aztecs went from 52% shooting in the first half to 25.9% (7 of 27) and 0 of 11 on 3s in the second. Boyd and Byrd were the only players in double figures with 14 each.
“It’s the matchup zone,” Dutcher said.
Utah State associate head coach Eric Haut brought it with him from Northern Kentucky, and Dutcher was so concerned – especially given his team’s struggles against UC San Diego’s similar scheme in the opener – that he even watched tape of Northern Kentucky games from last season seeing how teams attacked it.
“It’s a hard defense, it’s a good defense,” Dutcher said. “They’re going to cause people a lot of problems with that defense. We had a good first half and just a so-so second half against it.”
So-so might be a generous assessment. The Aztecs went from 1.265 points per possession in the first half to a beyond dreadful .697 over the final 20 minutes.
Even so, they led for 36:57 of the game.
Not enough, it turns out.
It doesn’t get any easier, either. The next two Saturdays, the Aztecs are at Boise State and at New Mexico — games they likely won’t be favored to win. They could be looking at three conference losses on Jan. 11.
“We were very dominant in the first half and showed a glimpse of what type of kind of team we are,” Byrd said. “But we’re a young team and we showed our lack of maturity at the end of the first half and some parts of the second. It’s going to be a long season. But I think (we) agree this team is destined for greatness at the end of it.
“Sometimes you need these type of losses to keep you humble and keep you pushing.”
Notable
Next up: a midweek bye followed by the first true road game of the season (and first trip outside California in more than a month), at Boise State on Jan. 4 (1 p.m. PST on CBS) … It is semester break, but the student section was still full after SDSU sold general ission tickets there for $31 … Many years, you’ll have the same official once or twice a season. Against Cal last weekend, SDSU had Randy Richardson for the fifth time in 10 games. Saturday, they had Michael Irving for the second straight game and fourth time this season … Jared Coleman-Jones suffered a cut below his right eye early in the first half after colliding with teammate Magoon Gwath. He returned with a bandage with 6:12 left in the first half, finishing with seven points and five rebounds … Four Aggies (Falslev, Martinez, Anderson and Deyton Albury) combined for 58 of their 67 points. All nine Aztecs who played scored.
