A mere 2:41 into the second half of a preseason exhibition, San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher angrily signaled for timeout.

His team was up 22.

“I can’t disclose too much of that,” sophomore forward Pharaoh Compton said, smiling. “He basically got on us, that’s it. He doesn’t yell too much. He only yells when he means business.”

Message received. Two minutes later, they were up 30 in the exhibition game against USD. The margin would balloon to 38, and they won by 33.

In Tuesday’s regular-season opener against Long Beach State, the Aztecs led by 15 at the half and won by 32, even growing the lead in the closing minutes with three freshmen, a sophomore and walk-on Cam Lawin on the floor.

“Shoot, I have to apologize to Cam for not getting him in last year as much,” junior guard Miles Byrd, Lawin’s former roommate, cracked afterward.

Lawin’s next chance for minutes could come Sunday afternoon against the Big Sky’s Idaho State (2 p.m., KUSI), which has gone nine years without a winning season and entered this one at No. 286 (out of 365 Division I programs) in the Kenpom metric.

Much of SDSU’s personnel is the same as a year ago. What isn’t, based on early returns, is the merciless, ruthless approach toward inferior competition.

“It was a lesson learned, but it’s also the maturity of the team,” Byrd said of a season in which only four of their 20 Division I wins were by 20-plus points. “We were really young last year, without a lot of experience in each role we were all in. With that comes slippage, in my opinion.

“It’s definitely something we’ve focused on a lot this summer, working, not taking any shortcuts. When we all take a step up in maturity, it helps us in situations like that, knowing we’re going to play until the final buzzer. I think we’ll see more this year, when we have teams on the ropes, to put them away and not get comfortable within the game.”

Or as Compton put it: “It’s just putting our foot down on our opponent when we know we’re way better.”

That has big-picture repercussions in a college game defined, increasingly, by computer algorithms that count every possession equally, whether it’s a buzzer-beater against a Top 25 foe in a raucous road environment or a garbage-time 3 by Lawin in a 32-point laugher to extend your win streak against current members of the Big West to 59.

What you do against the big boys matters. What you do against the Beach matters, too.

Upward or downward mobility in the metrics is largely determined by how you fare against the computer’s expectations. Predicted to win by 20 and win by 10, you fall. Predicted to win by 20 and win by 30, you climb.

SDSU began Tuesday at No. 29 in Kenpom and a 20-point favorite against the Beach … and finished it at No. 25 after winning 77-45.

Last year was the opposite. The Aztecs were 12-18 against the Las Vegas betting spread, which often mirrors the projected margin by leading computer metrics. They underperformed in all three nonconference Div. I “buy” games at Viejas Arena, beating UC San Diego by five (instead of 10.5), USD by 17 (instead of 24.5) and Cal Baptist by six (instead of 14) – opponents that get a five-figure check for a one-off date in your building.

Then there was a particularly bad stretch midway through the Mountain West season, when they were projected to beat Air Force, San Jose State and Wyoming by 14, 14 and 13.5 points … and won by one, three and two. And dropped some more.

In all, the inability to blow out teams probably cost the Aztecs 10 spots in the metrics, maybe more. They finished the regular season at 46 in Kenpom and 52 in the NET, which barely got them into the NCAA Tournament and sent them to the First Four in Dayton, Ohio, on short rest.

Teams that were in the mid-30s or low 40s in the metrics last season mostly got 9 and 10 seeds in the tournament.

The win over eventual NCAA runner-up Houston in November probably squeaked the Aztecs into the tournament, but the string of close calls against middling opposition nearly kept them out.

This season, the Aztecs have five Div. I home “buy” games: Long Beach State, Idaho State, Troy, Utah State and Lamar. Kenpom currently projects them to win all five by between 15 and 23 points.

All three home “buy” games last year were against Southern California brethren, which are acclimated to the time zone, sleep in their own beds the night before, ride a bus to the game and come equipped with shoulder chips from rosters filled with kids who dreamed of wearing scarlet and black. Four of the five this year are from other states and time zones, with little idea what they’re about to encounter inside Viejas Arena.

Or conditions, in other words, more conducive to lopsided wins.

“We’re playing with a certain level of maturity,” Dutcher said after his team outscored Long Beach State 51-21 over a 22-minute stretch. “We played all the way to the end, which we didn’t do a year ago. They did what they wanted to do when we got a lead in the second half, and that didn’t work out so well. I wanted to make sure they did what I wanted them to do for 40 minutes.

“We came closer to that.”