If the plan was to sleepwalk through the first 25 minutes of the Mountain West opener against statistically one of Division I\u2019s worst teams that had lost 19 straight on the road and lull No. 1-ranked Arizona into a false sense of security ahead of Saturday\u2019s game in Phoenix, mission accomplished.<\/p>\n
Or put it this way: If the Aztecs play the first half Saturday night like they did Wednesday, they won\u2019t be up by three.<\/p>\n
They ultimately ground out a 81-58 victory at Viejas Arena against Air Force, which has lost 42 of its last 45 conference games and lost here last season by 29. But it did little to quell fears that glistening promise is morphing into underachievement.<\/p>\n
If you wanted to encapsulate SDSU\u2019s night in a single sequence, it came midway through the first half, when Miles Byrd stole the ball and midcourt and drifted in for a wild, windmilling, uncontested dunk \u2026 that he slammed off the back rim.<\/p>\n
The Aztecs corralled the rebound and fed Byrd in the left corner for an open 3 \u2026 only for him to step on the sideline.<\/p>\n
By halftime, SDSU\u2019s two preseason all-conference guards \u2013 Byrd and senior Reese Dixon-Waters \u2013 had combined for four points on 2 of 11 shooting with a pair of turnovers. And the Aztecs led by three in a game computer metrics projected them to win by 24.<\/p>\n
SDSU actually won the opening tip and 13 seconds later had their first points, a three-point play by Magoon Gwath off a nice interior pass from Heide, just as they\u2019d drawn it up.<\/p>\n
Elzie Harrington blocked a shot at the other end, then Heide got a put-back off an offensive rebound to make it 5-0.<\/p>\n
Air Force, meanwhile, didn\u2019t manage to hit the rim on its first three possessions \u2013 a block, an airball and a turnover.<\/p>\n
So it was over?<\/p>\n
Not hardly.<\/p>\n
The Falcons went on an 8-0 run while the Aztecs missed eight straight shots. At one point, Eli Robinson had outscored the entire SDSU roster, 10-9. Midway through the first half, the team that entered the night with a No. 321 Kenpom ranking (out of 365 Division I programs) led 15-12.<\/p>\n
A Heide dunk started an 11-0 Aztecs run and you had shades of last season, when the hosts trailed by 12 before erupting for a 40-4 run en route to an easy 67-38 victory.<\/p>\n
But just as the Aztecs (6-3) switched on, they switched off again. They committed their first turnover with 6:44 left in the first half, then another on the next possession, then two more a few minutes later. It was 33-30 at intermission, and an uneasy pall swept across Viejas Arena.<\/p>\n
Notable<\/p>\n
The Mountain West has instituted injury reports for basketball during the conference season. SDSU\u2019s Sean Newman Jr. was listed as questionable but subbed in with his usual rotation at the first media timeout \u2026 Air Force leading scorer Caleb Walker didn\u2019t start but subbed in midway through the first half \u2026 It was Santa hat giveaway night at Viejas Arena, and many fans wore them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the plan was to sleepwalk through the first 25 minutes of the Mountain West opener against statistically…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":455011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1369,1370,3549,7264,18257,62,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-455010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-college-sports","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-sdsu-aztecs","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115739205621911297","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}