San Diego State's basketball team spent Thanksgiving in the islands after the Maui Invitational. It flew home Friday, and most players quickly fell asleep on the plane, exhausted from three hard games in three days against some of the nation's best teams.
The Aztecs coaches flipped open their laptops and started watching film from the tournament, in particular the 87-70 loss against Arizona.
There, flickering before their eyes 38,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, were both questions and answers about their team, hyped in the preseason like none other in school history, that had gone 1-2 in the tournament — a veritable gift from the basketball gods. A cheat code.
