San Diego State vs. North Carolina
What: NCAA First Four game
When: 6:10 p.m. PDT Tuesday
Where: UD Arena, Dayton, Ohio
On the air: truTV; 760 AM
Records: SDSU is 21-9, UNC is 22-13.
Series history: UNC leads 2-0, winning 103-92 in San Diego in 1988 and 99-63 in Chapel Hill in 1990.
Aztecs update: This will be an interesting test of their vaunted defense, which ranks first nationally at holding opponents to 37.8% shooting, without a full closed-door practice to install a game plan. The good news is 7-foot Magoon Gwath, the Mountain West Freshman of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year, is available after missing three-plus weeks with a hyperextended right knee. Gwath practiced for the first time Sunday, and coach Brian Dutcher said “he looked really good for a guy who’s been off since Feb. 22.” Getting their opponents to miss a shot isn’t the problem; grabbing the rebound is. They were crushed on the glass and outscored 18-3 in second-chance points in the 62-52 loss against Boise State in the Mountain West quarterfinals on Thursday. The other issue is scoring. The Aztecs rank 13th nationally in defensive efficiency but only 111th in offense. They didn’t make a basket for the final nine minutes against Boise State, and Nick Boyd (20 points) was the only real threat. The Aztecs will need bigger games from fellow starting guards Miles Byrd and BJ Davis, who shot a combined 3 of 17 against Boise State. This is the Aztecs’ fifth straight tip to the NCAA Tournament, but their first trip to the First Four. They went 7-2 in the last two, both losses coming against eventual champion UConn. Kenpom projects a 74-71 Tar Heels win.
Tar Heels update: They had an unusual resume, going 1-12 in Quad 1 games but 8-0 in Quad 2. Had UCLA not missed a last-second shot to win, they would have been 0-13. But their metrics are solid — 33 in Kenpom, 36 in the NET — and their nonconference strength of schedule, a huge deal for the selection committee, ranks fifth nationally. Their first six losses were all against top-25 Kenpom teams before hitting hit a rough patch in January, losing against three teams that didn’t make the tournament — Stanford, Wake Forest and Pitt. Since February, their only losses are to Duke (three times) and Clemson, although the wins are against teams ranked between 71 and 192 in Kenpom. They came from 24 down against Duke in the ACC semis, then lost when forward Jae’Lyn Withers was whistled for a lane violation with 4.1 seconds left as a teammate made what would have been a game-tying free throw. They rank 22nd in offensive efficiency but tend to get a lot of shots blocked, and SDSU ranks No. 1 in block percentage (swatting 18.5% of its opponent’s 2-point attempts). The big star is RJ Davis (17.0 points per game), whom SDSU’s Boyd faced in a preseason scrimmage in 2023 while at Florida Atlantic. “RJ was killing us, I’m not going to lie,” Boyd said. “We’ve got a tall task.” Ian Jackson (12.4) and Seth Trimble (11.6) also average double figures in points per game.
Next up: The winner plays No. 6 seed Ole Miss in Milwaukee on Friday (1:05 p.m. PDT, TNT)
— MARK ZEIGLER
