After thrilling finishes in its previous two games against UNLV and the University of New Mexico, the No. 16 San Diego State men’s basketball team looked to put on another good show for fans at Viejas Arena Saturday night.
The Aztecs did not deliver, but are not entirely at fault. Looking sluggish at times, SDSU could never quite put away Air Force as the Falcons consistently milked the shot clock to the final seconds, slowed down the tempo of the game on both ends of the court and consistently used pesky backdoor cuts for easy layups.
Yet SDSU (17-2) was able to knock off Air Force, 57-44, to move to a perfect 3-0 Mountain West Conference record.
“When you’re a running, up-tempo team like us, it’s kind of frustrating guarding a team like them,” junior guard Chase Tapley said. “They’re very persistent with their offense, back dooring, cutting, curling and flaring. It’s tough to guard. You have to maintain for maybe the whole 35 seconds of the shot clock … You just really focus on the concept of playing Air Force defense. I think we did a great job of that.”
Tapley led SDSU in scoring with 16 points, while sophomore guard Jamaal Franklin chipped in 14 points and 10 rebounds for a double-double.
Junior center Taylor Broekhuis led Air Force with 16 points. Junior guard / forward Mike Fitzgerald also contributed 14 points for the Falcons (11-6, 1-2).
The Aztecs led by as many as 13 points late in the second half, but were never able to put away the Falcons for good despite Air Force making a season-low one-of-18 shot attempts from three-point range.
“You can’t go on the road in this league and shoot 1-for-18 from the three-point line and turn the ball over as much as we did and expect to win games,” Broekhuis said. “They came out and executed their game plan and got us rushing around and turning the ball over and we weren’t able to flow into our offense.”
Despite the sometimes sluggish play, SDSU head coach Steve Fisher was happy with the win.
“Nothing comes easy and rarely does it look pretty when you play Air Force,” Fisher said. “This is a good team we played tonight. We came in and got a victory. We’re 3-0 and 17-2 and that’s pretty good.”
Next, the Aztecs will travel to Laramie, Wyo. to take on the Wyoming Cowboys, who will go into the matchup with a 16-3 record. The game is set for 5:30 p.m. tomorrow.
