The San Diego State men’s basketball team bounced back with an 81-65 win over the Wyoming Cowboys at Viejas Arena on Tuesday night.
Senior guard Lamont Butler matched his career-high with 23 points on 10 of 14 shooting. Senior forward Jaedon LeDee poured in 17 points and had seven rebounds.
The Aztecs’ offense began the game on an 11-4 run thanks to three 3-pointers made, one made by senior guard Micah Parrish and the two made by sophomore forward Elijah Saunders.
However, SDSU missed the next 14 of its next 16 triples in the first half.
Head coach Brian Dutcher spoke about the offensive adjustments that were made when the offense struggled to shoot efficiently from the perimeter.
“We said well ‘let’s just duck them in instead,’” Dutcher said. “Because (Wyoming) have to guard, they can’t ignore a guy (like LeDee) under the basket and that’s an adjustment we made in the first half, (and) carried it over to the second half.”
SDSU (16-4, 5-2 Mountain West) surrendered the lead momentarily when Cowboys (10-9, 3-3) guard Sam Griffin drilled a 3-pointer to hand Wyoming a 12-11 lead with 13:34 to play in the first half.
A few minutes later, sophomore guard Miles Byrd called timeout to take himself out of the game for a potential injury.
Byrd did return to play in the second half and finished the game with three points and two assists.
Butler’s perimeter defense was the highlight of the game. With 9:01 to play in the first half, Butler pickpocketed the ball handler at half-court and side-stepped his way to the rim for a layup to keep the Aztecs in front, 20-18.
However, the Cowboys immediately responded with a 14-7 run that caused the Aztecs to call timeout late in the first half.
In the last three minutes of the first half, the Aztecs’ defense forced three turnovers to get back in the game with a pair of mid-range jumpers by Butler and LeDee helped tie up the game at 32-apiece.
Then in the final 10 seconds, LeDee slid his feet defensively to force a shot clock violation, giving SDSU the basketball back.
Senior guard Darrion Trammell nailed a turnaround shot in the paint at the buzzer to put SDSU back in front at the break 34-32.
The Aztecs’ offense played a clean first half, committing zero turnovers.
After intermission, junior guard Reese Waters took a dribble handoff from LeDee and drilled a midrange jumper to put the Aztecs up four.
The Cowboys then drained three 3-pointers to take a one-point lead with 17 minutes left in the second half.
The Aztecs retook the lead right back as LeDee hit an off-balance floater in transition — SDSU never relinquished the lead from there.
On the next sequence, Butler’s help-defense led to another steal, and he finished on the other end with a layup that sent the crowd into a frenzy. Butler had three steals in the contest.
“We were focused, we played very hard defensively,” Butler said. “We wanted to make every shot tough.”
The Aztecs started to stretch their lead as Parrish used LeDee’s screen to get a wide-open layup and SDSU found themselves with a 7-point advantage.
The highlight of the second half came when Bryd threw an alley-oop pass to sophomore forward Demarshay Johnson Jr. that had the crowd roaring on its feet.
The lead increased to 15 when LeDee sealed his defender in the post, caught the basketball and scored underneath the rim.
The Cowboys tried to switch things up by going to a zone defense, but Butler immediately broke down the zone with a straight-line drive to the rim.
Butler spoke about Wyoming’s approach to guarding him, which resulted in him tying his career-high of 23 points.
“Their game plan was to sag off me and I was able to knock down shots,” Butler said. “I got in the paint and got downhill in transition, which opened up my game a little bit more.”
SDSU’s biggest lead came when Saunders hit the bottom of the net on a wide-open 3-pointer to put the Aztecs up 72-54.
In the final minute of the contest, LeDee tacked on a pair of free throws for his final points of the night. LeDee is two shy away from reaching 1,000 points for his career.
The Aztecs owned a 19-0 advantage in points off turnovers, forcing the Cowboys into 15 turnovers while only having two of their own.
With this win, SDSU remains undefeated at home this season (10-0).
The Aztecs will face Colorado State at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 30 at Moby Arena in Fort Collins, Colorado.
