Aztecs Find Some Hope in First Loss

If awards were presented to the masters of understatement, then San Diego State basketball Coach Jim Brandenburg would be winner of an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and a Pulitzer in one.

No need to count the ballots. Nobody acts or says it better.

In that light, his assessment of his team’s season-opening 66-58 loss to Villanova in the first round of the Maui tournament Friday at the Lahaina Civic Center was almost a ringing endorsement.

“Truthfully, I was not that discouraged,” Brandenburg said. “If we take this game in stride, take the rest of the games in this tournament in stride and keep getting better, we can be a good basketball team in a month.”

Don’t make those Final Four reservations yet. But this was not a bad start for a team that features eight new players, six of them community college transfers.

It was one of those new players, center Marty Dow, that gave Brandenburg several reasons to be “not that discouraged”

Dow, a 7-foot-1 junior, scored a game-high 15 points and had six rebounds. And he did it playing against Villanova’s Tom Greis, who at 7-3 and 240 pounds, is as big a player as he is likely to face this season. Even more encouraging was that Dow, a transfer from Northeastern Oklahoma A&M;, missed the first two weeks of practice because of bulging discs in his lower back and has only been practicing for three weeks.

“He played OK,” was as much as Brandenburg would allow. “It’s always dangerous to make assumptions after one game. But I feel more encouragement than discouragement at this point.”

The loss dropped the Aztecs into the consolation bracket, where they will play Lefty Driesell-coached James Madison today at 1:30 p.m. PST. The Dukes allowed North Carolina to score the final 10 points in losing, 80-79, on King Rice’s 15-foot bank shot as time expired.

While the play of Dow and the relative closeness of the score were encouraging, it still left Brandenburg with several concerns, starting with his two point guards.

Neither senior Rodney Jones nor his backup, Arthur Massey, distinguished himself as they combined for seven turnovers and no assists. Jones scored four points, made three turnovers and managed to foul out while playing only 26 minutes. Massey, a junior transfer from Alvin (Tex.) Community College, had four points and made four turnovers in 21 minutes.

But they were not alone. The Aztecs committed 19 turnovers to Villanova’s 15. And that was with guard Michael Best, who last year led the team with 96, making only two.

Nine of the turnovers were by forwards Shawn Jamison (five) and Michael Hudson (four). Both are junior transfers from Pratt (Kan.) Community College.

But all was not bad for Jamison. He scored 14 points and demonstrated with a pair of rim-rattling dunks that he could team with Dow to give the Aztecs a strong inside game.

Now they need to find someone to take up the load from the outside. Best would be a most likely candidate, but he is still working to come back from surgery, to remove pins in his knee, that kept out of practice for three weeks. During that time, Best said, his weight reached 240, 25 more than his playing weight.

Best said he is down to 225, but that was before the game, which was played in a gymnasium cooled only by fans.

“It was hot,” Best said. “I probably lost 10 pounds’ playing.”

The extra weight appears to have most adversely affected his shooting (three for 11), but it didn’t bother his rebounding; he had a game-high eight.

“I’m not going to say we played good, but we played in spurts,” Best said. “The new guys are trying to do a lot. Hopefully, this game got the butterflies out.”

The Aztecs started strong, opening a 10-5 lead in the first 5:11. But after they took their biggest lead at 24-17 with 6:25 left in the first half, the Wildcats rallied. Villanova scored 14 of the next 16 points over the next five minutes to take a 31-26 lead.

“That one big run ended up being the difference in the ballgame,” Brandenburg said. “We did not execute well offensively. It was our struggling and frustration offensively that made the difference in the game.”

The Aztecs did score the final four points of the first half and the first three of the second to take their last lead, 33-31. The Wildcats went ahead for good, 37-35, with 18:00 to play, but the Aztecs stayed close most of the rest of the way.

SDSU was within 55-51 with 4:50 remaining, but the Wildcats scored six in a row to take their biggest lead at 61-51 with 2:05 left. The Aztecs, meanwhile, were going without a point over 3:13.

The difference, Brandenburg said, might have been Villanova’s switch to two-three match-up zone defense that put pressure on SDSU’s guards and all but eliminated their outside game.

The Aztecs shot three of nine from three-point range. Fifteen of their 22 field goals came within three feet of the basket.

“We’ve got some athletes, but we need is some smart pills,” Brandenburg said.