By Agustin Gonzalez, Assistant Sports Editor
Following the narrow win against Cal Poly, San Diego State head coach Steve Fisher said the team was “running in mud” on offense and “couldn’t throw (the ball) into the ocean.” After Saturday night’s 90-64 win against UC Santa Barbara at Viejas Arena, Fisher used a different analogy to describe his team.
“Tonight, in the first half, we could have shot it into a thimble and it would have gone in without hitting the sides,” Fisher said.
A day after finals week ended, No. 11 / 10 SDSU (12-0) showed no ill effects from the all-nighters and cram sessions. The Aztecs came out firing early and put together possibly their best 20-minute stretch of Fisher’s entire tenure on Montezuma Mesa.
“I think that in my 11-plus years here, this was probably the best half we’ve played at both ends of the floor against a good team,” Fisher said. “… We’re not going to shoot 8-for-13 (from three) or 9-for-9 (from the line) often. But we did tonight. We looked really good.”
SDSU, which has a habit of keeping games close in the first half and using a dominating second period run to break the game open, started that run a few minutes early. The Aztecs outscored the Gauchos 17-1 in the last 5:18 of the first half to take a dominating 57-29 lead at halftime.
D.J. Gay, Malcolm Thomas and Billy White all reached double figures in scoring at the half and combined for 35 of the Aztecs’ points.
As UCSB’s signature matchup zone clogged up the inside, the Aztecs shot 61.5 percent from long range in the first half.
The 28-point deficit was too much for the Gauchos to overcome. The closest they would get was to cut the lead down to 21 at the 10:13 mark in the second half.
Thomas, SDSU’s leading scorer for the past three games, had another monster performance with 18 points, 10 rebounds and four assists. Thomas’ length and leaping ability tore up the Gaucho’s zone, and five of his rebounds came on the offensive end.
Saturday also marked the return of Kawhi Leonard and Chase Tapley, who missed the Cal Poly game due to flu-like symptoms and took almost an entire week off of practice. Leonard had 13 points and Tapley chipped in 12 points off the bench.
UCSB came into Saturday’s game with an air of confidence after knocking off No. 22 UNLV at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. But SDSU was prepared for whatever the Gaucho’s gave them.
“We watched a lot of film and saw UC Santa Barbara win that UNLV game at UNLV which was huge,” Gay said. “So we didn’t come into this game thinking we were going to beat them bad or anything of that nature. They were a very good team, we just happened to play great basketball today.”
With the win, SDSU became one of the nine undefeated teams in the country. The Aztecs’ 12-game win streak is second-longest active streak in the country next to Duke.
Prior to Saturday’s win, SDSU narrowly defeated a scrappy Cal Poly team 51-45 and routed cross-town rival USD 77-49. The Aztecs are now one of only nine undefeated teams left in the nation.
