No. 24 Aztecs use second-half momentum to defeat Fresno State in Mountain West opener – San Diego Union-Tribune

FRESNO – The veterans who have been through the Mountain West wars, who have been in Logan and Laramie, who have been in the mountains and the plains, will tell you that conference road games are just different. They simply are.

The idea is to hang a W and not a Picasso.

So you can understand coach Brian Dutcher’s concern, concern and dismay as a squad with no returning starters and a number of freshmen traveled to Fresno State for the Mountain West opener, fresh out of the rankings and reeling from the overtime win Feeling good on Saturday was No. 6 Houston, who didn’t know how different the first real away game of the season would be.

It ended well in the end, an 84-62 win for the No. 24 Aztecs in front of the usual handful of fans at the Save Mart Center on a crazy night when the Nos. 1, 2 and 5 in the Associated Press poll all lost.

And the lesson learned was a good one: Conference games aren’t always pretty.

This lasted about 25 minutes, until Dutcher’s youngsters calmed down, until the Bulldogs started pressing and the Aztecs started tearing it up, until redshirt Magoon Gwath showed why NBA scouts say they are turned off by his mix Size and ability are “fascinated”.

Gwath had the breakout performance that Dutcher promised: 25 points on 9 of 13 shooting (3 of 4 on 3s), 10 rebounds (five on offense), two blocks, just two fouls in 28 minutes.

And it helped them break out of the early doldrums in their ugliest half of the season.

On their first four defensive possessions, they surrendered four offensive rebounds. They didn’t score a goal in the first 4:48 minutes. They shot air balls. They blocked free throws. They got into big trouble. They dribbled out of bounds from their legs. They threw a rebound into the Bulldogs’ basket.

The score after 15 minutes: Fresno State 15, SDSU 13.

Then Gwath made a 3-pointer from the right corner. And then another one from the same place. And then another from the right wing.

He’s shown that kind of range in practice, but in Division I games he was 1 of 6. At halftime Wednesday, he was 3 of 3 and had 11 points, eight above his season average against Division I opponents (he had 16 in a 51-point win against Div. III Occidental).

The Aztecs (5-2) extended their lead to 10, but just when you thought they might make it easy, they let the Bulldogs get to within 29-25 at the break. The Bulldogs had the ball early in the second half, missed it, got another offensive board and the putback made it a one possession game.

It was such a night.

On nights like these, the Aztecs rely on their defense until the shots are fired, and they did. The Bulldogs (3-5) had a shooting percentage of 27.3% overall and 5 of 26 from beyond the arc, and leading scorer Amar Augillard – last season’s junior college national player of the year – improved from an average of 17.6 Points per game to zero for the first 32½ minutes of the game. He finished with five points on 1-of-10 shooting before being fouled in just 17 minutes.

The Aztecs’ shooting percentage increased from 36.7% in the first half to 57.9% in the second. They got a combined 25 points from BJ Davis and Wayne McKinney III, 23 of them after halftime.

Remarkable

Next up: Home game against USD on Saturday (7 p.m., YurView and streaming on the Mountain West Network). Fresno State’s next home game is also Dec. 14 against USD.

• SDSU radio announcer Ted Leitner was honored at halftime with a plaque and a resolution from the mayor declaring it “Ted Leitner Day” in Fresno. This is Leitner’s final season playing SDSU basketball games. He retired from football last year

• Shortly before the start of the game, there was a medical emergency in the stands and a fan was transported from the arena by paramedics.

• A few minutes into the second half, the ball bounced into the seats on the sideline. A fan in a hoodie picked up the ball, dribbled and shot a three-pointer, but it missed badly. “I didn’t warm up,” he said as the referees retrieved the ball.

Originally published: December 4, 2024 at 10:06 pm PST