Aztecs Trampled by Second-Half Run : Basketball: Utah gains 84-70 victory after San Diego State leads by as many as nine. It is SDSU’s 19th consecutive defeat.

San Diego State has been winning men’s basketball games about as often as it has rained in Southern California this year.

Actually, less often.

The Aztecs continued on their school-record drought, losing for the 19th consecutive time with an 84-70 decision Thursday at Utah (18-8, 8-6).

The defeat puts the Aztecs (2-24, 0-14) in the Western Athletic Conference record book. They matched the 1973-74 Wyoming team as the only conference school to go 0-14. No school has gone 0-16, and SDSU has two road games remaining, at Brigham Young on Saturday and at Hawaii.

Brigham Young (19-6, 10-4) shares the conference lead and has beaten SDSU five straight, and the last six times they have played in Provo.

The Aztecs looked as if they might avoid sharing infamy with Wyoming. They went ahead 41-34 on an 18-footer by Joe McNaull with 4 minutes 14 seconds to play in the first half, but Utah countered with a 10-2 run to take its first lead of the game, 44-43, just before intermission.

“That was the best first half of basketball we’ve played,” SDSU interim Coach Jim Harrick Jr. said. “We shot a lot of (three-point baskets) this week in practice and worked on our inside-outside game. That’s the kind of basketball I like to play.”

The Aztecs made six of eight from the three-point arc in the first half and one of two in the second.

SDSU scored the first four points of the second half and regained the lead, then the Utes delivered a decisive run, scoring 12 straight points to make it 60-49 with 10:48 remaining.

Byron Wilson, who led Utah with 16 points, scored four of the 12 points.

Over an 8:40 stretch in the second half, from 15:46 to 7:06, Utah outscored the Aztecs 19-4, turning a three-point deficit into a 65-53 advantage. After that, SDSU never got within nine points.

“We haven’t been in a lot of close games this year,” Harrick said. “We don’t know who to go to and who not to go to in crucial situations. We were up by nine (near) the end of first half, but we got excited and really didn’t know what to do. Maybe we ran out of gas.”

“We got bogged down in the second half. It seems like we got tired.”

Paul Afeaki and M’Kay McGrath added 14 apiece. Jimmy Soto scored 12 points for Utah and was 10 for 12 from the free-throw line.

Utah made 10 of 12 free throws down the stretch to preserve the victory.

The Aztecs were led by Tony Clark’s 20 points. McNaull added 19 points, pulled down 10 rebounds and earned high praise from Harrick.

“Joe played his guts out,” Harrick said. “I couldn’t be more pleased with him. We’ve moved him into a high post area to get him off of the block. He likes to play out there because he can play a little looser.”