LAS VEGAS — There was a spectacular lob dunk and the usual complement of 3-pointers and a sweet left-handed jump hook over 7-footer Neemias Queta after a couple pumps and pivots.
But if you want to know how 19th-ranked and top-seeded San Diego State beat Utah State, 68-57, on Saturday afternoon to break its nasty habit of losing in the Mountain West Tournament championship game (six times in its previous seven trips), you had to roll the tape on less glamorous moments.
Like the sequence midway through the first half with the Aztecs down one and Lamont Butler’s layup having just rolled off the rim. Butler dove on the floor between three Aggies for the ball and passed out to the perimeter, where Jordan Schakel missed a 3 … but Joshua Tomaic flew in for the offensive rebound and ended the possession with a hard-fought basket inside.
They’ll get a trophy and a piece of net they cut down afterward, and the NCAA Tournament selection committee could bump them up a seed line or two — maybe a 5, probably a 6 — when the 68-team is unveiled Sunday afternoon (3 p.m., CBS). But the real symbol of their achievement is on their bodies — floor burns, bruises, scraped elbows, bloody noses.
Coaches call it want-to.
For that, the Aztecs can thank the Aggies and a pair of tough losses in mid-January at Dee Glen Smith Spectrum in Logan, Utah. Players reasoned they had exhausted their allotment of losses for the season and vowed not to lose another, and they haven’t.
Saturday’s win was their 14th straight, and in only one of them have they trailed in the second half.
The Aggies (20-8) got within six with three minutes to go and had the ball, but Trey Pulliam — maybe SDSU’s best player over the past month — picked Justin Bean at midcourt and glided in for a layup. He scored again on the next possession to make it 64-55 and seal it.
Matt Mitchell led the Aztecs (23-4) with 14 points and was named tournament MVP. Nathan Mensah played his best game in weeks at both ends of the floor, finishing with 10 points, eight rebounds and two blocks while largely keeping Queta (18 points, three turnovers) in check.
Pulliam had eight of his 10 points in the second half. Terrell Gomez also had 10, Schakel had nine and 10 different players scored in the kind of balanced attack that has defined them all season.
The other thing that defines them: defense. The Aggies shot just 37.3 percent, were 3 of 13 behind the 3-point arc and had 16 turnovers.
The celebrations were what you’d expect from a team that had lost twice to the Aggies earlier in the season as well as the last two Mountain West Tournament finals. They charged on the court at the buzzer. They hugged each other. They waved 2021 Champions signs. They mobbed coach Brian Dutcher and messed up his hair. They danced under purple and silver confetti.
“We met them the last three times in the final and we finally got them,” Dutcher said. “Last year we beat them twice in the regular season and they got us in the tournament final, I was hoping we could reverse that.”
Mitchell got the microphone next and said: “This means everything. I’m especially happy for the grad transfers who came here, Terrell (Gomez from CSUN) and Josh (Tomaic from Maryland). They came here to win, to win games, to win championships, and that’s what we did.”
The first half was the rock fight you’d expect from the Nos. 8 and 13 defenses in Division I according to the Kenpom metric (and, yes, Utah State is eighth). Score: Aztecs 28, Aggies 24.
SDSU shot 37.9%.
Utah State shot 37.5%.
The personnel was different from the first two meetings. Mitchell grotesquely hyperextended his knee in the second half of the Jan. 14 game and didn’t play two days later. Mensah played in both January games, but he was a different player at 2,001 feet than he was at the 4,770 feet of Logan, where he visibly suffered from altitude sickness.
The tactics largely remained unchanged. The Aztecs didn’t double-team Queta in the low post, taking their chances with Mensah and Tomaic in single coverage. At the other end, the Aggies tried to make the Aztecs take (and miss) contested 3s, as 2 of 11 in the first half attested.
Neither team was able to establish an offensive rhythm, scoring on consecutive possessions only twice each in the first half. When the Aztecs finally did it, they followed it with five straight empty trips.
Two members of the veteran officiating crew (Eric Curry and Randy McCall) had worked SDSU’s 77-70 semifinal win against Nevada the night before, a game that featured 52 fouls and 66 free throws.
They kept blowing their whistles Saturday; well, at least they did against the Aztecs. The halftime foul count was 8-1, although it ended up costing SDSU only two points because the Aggies made just two free throws after getting in the bonus.
The Aztecs opened the second half with six straight points, the last two coming on the thunderous dunk by Mensah off Pulliam’s lob. That pushed the margin to 10 and compelled a timeout from Utah State coach Craig Smith, the first team to blink.
The Aggies never got closer than six the rest of the way.
