Three thoughts on San Diego State’s 73-65 win against New Mexico on Tuesday night at Viejas Arena:
1. Tire tread
Midway through the second half, one of SDSU’s assistants asked coach Brian Dutcher if he wanted to give forward Jared Coleman-Jones a rest. The 6-foot-10 forward had averaged 22 minutes over the previous five games, and he was already at that.
Dutcher shook his head. Coleman-Jones stayed in.
He would play all but 36 seconds of the second half, still on the floor in the closing minutes to convert the three-point play (more on that later) that sealed one of the Aztecs’ most important wins of the season.
He had to because starting forward Magoon Gwath was out and Gwath’s replacement, Miles Heide, got into first-half foul trouble.
But that wasn’t the point. The point: Coleman-Jones played extended minutes because he could. Because his tires still had plenty of tread left in the season’s 26th game.
“They’re on fresh legs,” Dutcher said. “We don’t try to overwork them in practice. We try to do whatever we have to do to get a game plan in, but we’re sensitive to not wearing them out — not trying to win the game in practice. We have to win the game when we’re playing the game, and we need fresh legs to do that.”
It goes beyond practice. Dutcher religiously has stuck with a nine- and sometimes 10- or 11-man rotation throughout the season to limit his starters from reaching the fatigue red zone, knowing he might need them to go deep when the games mean more later in February and March.
To understand why SDSU is playing its best basketball now, don’t look at Mountain West shooting percentages or rebound rates or assist-to-turnover ratios. Go to minutes played and scan your finger down the top 20 names; you won’t find an Aztec.
The minutes leaders are Miles Byrd and Nick Boyd, who each average 29-plus minutes per game. Every other team in the Mountain West has at least one player in the 30s, and eight teams have at least two. The top 10 players all average over 33 minutes per game.
Another way to look at it is the percentage of possible minutes played. Byrd (73.9%) and Boyd (75%) are the only two players on SDSU’s roster above 60%. Most teams have three above 60%. New Mexico has four.
Minutes add up. This is the time of year when the tire tread runs thin.
This is also the time of year when the Aztecs do the opposite and extend minutes. Boyd played 34 minutes on Tuesday. Coleman-Jones played 32. Byrd played 31. BJ Davis played 27½, five minutes over his average. Pharaoh Compton played 19, six over his average. Heide played 25½, 10 over his average.
“Our depth has helped us,” Dutcher said. “Their minutes are going up because the games are important. Not that I don’t trust my bench. But these guys, when they’re playing well like they are, they’re going to play with less rest now.”
2. 10 quarterbacks
New Mexico likes to “blitz” ball screens, meaning it aggressively sends both defenders to trap the dribbler while their three teammates sit into ing lanes.
The Aztecs had seen this before. Houston did it back in November, and they countered by spreading the floor to unclog the paint and then finding the rolling post for easy baskets.
“Just watching film from that was like the test answers and gave us a study guide for how the bigs can catch the ball and look and find other guys,” Heide said. “Once you hit the rolling post, you’re right in the middle of where everyone is, so you’ve got options to make plays.”
And Heide made one in the game’s biggest moment.
SDSU was up seven with three minutes left and the shot clock was expiring when Heide set a ball screen for Boyd. The Lobos blitzed it. Heide rolled into the lane. Boyd found him with 4 seconds left on the shot clock. Three Lobos converged.
Coleman-Jones was stationed in the left corner, as instructed.
Heide: “I heard the shot clock (countdown), so I either have to get a shot up quick or I have to find someone quick. I saw Jared cutting from the corner and gave it to him.”
Dutcher: “I told him to think about cutting occasionally, and he made the really good cut. You coach them and they listen, and he made the play I suggested and it worked out really well.”
Coleman-Jones caught it with 3 seconds left, pump-faked New Mexico center Nelly Junior Joseph into the air, scored, was fouled and made the free throw for a 10-point lead.
“In football, the most valuable player is the quarterback,” Dutcher said. “You’ve got a really good one, and he has the ball the whole time. In basketball, everybody’s the quarterback. They all get the ball and they all get to make decisions, who to throw it to, when to throw it, where it should go.
“So I’m playing with 10 quarterbacks over the course of the game. The decisions they make either make the team look really good or really bad.”
3. Altitude matters
A year ago, there was a stir among stat geeks over ESPN’s Basketball Power Index, or BPI. It seemed to factor elevation in its secret algorithm, which would explain why Mountain West teams were, on average, 32% worse in BPI compared with the universally accepted Kenpom metric.
This year, that discrepancy has quietly vanished. The BPI and Kenpom of Mountain West teams, on average, are almost identical.
But it’s a fair question: Why shouldn’t elevation be a factor in metrics?
Because it certainly is on the court. The results annually reflect that.
New Mexico is 22-6 overall and 14-3 in the Mountain West. Now consider its records above and below 4,500 feet, the elevation at which altitude typically becomes an issue in aerobic sports.
Overall: 18-1 above, 4-5 below.
Conference: 12-0 above, 2-3 below.
(The Aztecs are 6-1 in road or neutral games below 4,500 feet, and that includes three ranked opponents at the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas. They are 2-3 at altitude.)
And it’s not just the Lobos. There are 17 Division I teams that have home arenas above 4,500 feet. Only two have winning records this season at lower elevations — Utah State at 7-1 and Nevada at 4-3 (although the Wolf Pack still must play at Viejas Arena).
Utah is 14-3 above 4,500 feet and 1-9 below. Colorado is 10-8 and 1-9. BYU is 15-3 and 4-5. Idaho State is 12-5 and 1-8. Southern Utah is 9-6 and 2-10. Denver is 7-6 and 3-13. Montana State is 11-7 and 1-9.
Or let’s take a closer look within the Mountain West and a more apples-to-apples comparison. There are six altitude teams: New Mexico, Utah State, Colorado State, Nevada, Wyoming and Air Force. And five located below 3,000 feet: SDSU, Boise State, UNLV, San Jose State and Fresno State.
The non-altitude teams have a .308 winning percentage (8-18) in conference road games against altitude teams, compared with .444 rate (12-15) by altitude teams against fellow altitude schools on the road.
The reverse is true as well. In conference road games below 3,000 feet, the non-altitude teams have a .529 winning percentage (9-8). The altitude teams at lower elevations are at .440 (11-14).
Next up for the Aztecs is a Saturday game at Wyoming at 7,220 feet, the highest venue in Division I. Over the past 18 seasons, they are 16-0 against the Cowboys at Viejas Arena … and 8-5 in Laramie.
“We know it’s going to be a hard game in Laramie,” Dutcher said. “I’ve been going there for 25 years, and I know how hard it is. It’s going to be a hard game. We will approach it that way.”
