TUCSON, Ariz.—San Diego State put together its most successful season in 90 years as a program, winning a school-record 32 games, a share of the Mountain West regular-season title and a conference tournament championship to boot.
One loss is all it’ll take to wipe some of the varnish off.
Fair or not, everything the sixth-ranked Aztecs have done this season will be couched by whether they can beat No. 15 seed Northern Colorado in the second round of the NCAA tournament on Thursday.
Finally break that streak of losing in the NCAA tournament and San Diego State, the No. 2 seed in the West Regional, solidifies its place among the West Coast powers in college basketball. Lose and, well, the Aztecs are just another good-during-the-season team that can’t get it done in March.
“Everybody in the tournament will be judged with double exclamation points if they’ve had a great season by what they do in the tournament,” Aztecs coach Steve Fisher said Wednesday. “Whatever happens to us in the tournament will not take away from a great regular season … yet people remember those (teams) that advance.”
San Diego State (32-2) has made steady progress under Fisher, reaching the NCAA tournament in 2002, 2006 and 2010.
Problem is, the Aztecs can’t win when they get there.
San Diego State is 0-for-6 in NCAA tournaments, including a three-point loss to Tennessee in the first round last season. The only success the Aztecs have had has been in the Division II tournament and that came back in the 1950s and 1960s.
Fisher hasn’t done a lot to remind his players about the streak, sticking to his mantra that they need to play hard, no matter the opponent or point in the season.
“Since Day 1, he told us that we were a very good team and have the capability of having a very special season and to make sure not to get caught up in the hype,” Aztecs senior guard D.J. Gay said. “Because with a couple of losses all that stuff can go away.”
San Diego State at least has the advantage of knowing what to expect after playing in the NCAA tournament last season.
The Bears (21-10) don’t because they’ve never been here before.
Northern Colorado officially joined Division I in 2006-07 and, after a couple of ugly seasons, has been steadily building as a program. The Bears won 25 games last season to earn a CIT invite and topped it this season by winning the Big Sky Conference regular-season and tournament championships to make the field of 68.
Northern Colorado is filled with tenacious rebounders, can shoot well from the free-throw line and the 3-point arc and has score-in-bunches guard Devon Beitzel, who’s been compared to BYU’s Jimmer Fredette. And, after a few jittery moments in the initial practice in the desert, feel like they belong.
“Our first practice down here they lacked a little bit of focus, which is understandable. I almost anticipated it to be honest with you,” said Bears first-year head coach B.J. Hill, an assistant in Greeley the previous four years. “But once we brought them back about 15 minutes into practice, I thought we got a lot out of it.”
The closest Northern Colorado came to seeing teams the caliber of San Diego State was in games against Illinois and Arizona.
The Bears held their own against the Illini, trimming away at a 19-point halftime deficit before losing by 10 to a team that had its sights on the top 10 at the time. Northern Colorado didn’t stand much of a chance in its early-season matchup with Arizona, though, losing 93-70 in a game that was all but over at halftime.
The Bears have some recent success against the Aztecs to fall back on, too.
It came in 2008, when Northern Colorado ended San Diego State’s 13-game home winning streak by beating the Aztecs 62-56 behind 15 points from Beitzel. The Bears came back early the next season and played San Diego State tight again before losing in Greeley.
San Diego State has just a couple of players still around and is a vastly different team now, but it at least puts a seed of hope in the Bears’ minds.
“We really can’t take too much from that game four years ago, but we can’t shy away from them, either,” Beitzel said. “We understand why they are a great team. We’ve just got to make sure that we don’t go in there wide-eyed and just play our game.”
The Bears aren’t putting much credence into those games, but Fisher brought it up, even showed his team the tapes of those games to give them a glimpse of what could happen if they take Northern Colorado lightly.
“They’re a hungry team, very fearless, they crash the boards like crazy, they don’t back down from anybody,” said Gay, among the players who was booed off the court by the home fans after the loss in San Diego. “They came into our place, didn’t matter what kind of hype we had behind us or anything like that, they came in and threw the first punch.”
This time, the Aztecs want to get the first punch—and the first win.
