SAN DIEGO — The head student manager for the San Diego State men’s basketball team is Nihilo Ibarra, a nice, mild-mannered kid who comes to practice every day and dutifully does his job.
He got a technical foul Friday night at Viejas Arena.
Boise State had just called timeout with 5:47 left in the first half after Adam Seiko drained a 3-pointer from Julian that capped a 20-2 run and pushed the Aztecs’ lead to 19. One of Ibarra’s jobs is to walk to the opposite end of the scorer’s table during timeouts to retrieve stat sheets for the coaches, and as he went he made the celebratory dialing-up-a-3 phone gesture with his hand, just like Seiko does after making one.
Tony Padilla, known as one of the crustier officials on the West Coast, angrily T-ed him up.
No bueno if it’s a one-possession game with first place in the Mountain West on the line. But all laughs and shrugs if it’s a laugher of a game, which it was — the No. 22 Aztecs leading by 22 at the half and keeping the pedal to the metal in a 72-52 victory against the short-handed Broncos.
It leaves SDSU (18-5, 9-2) alone in first as it heads back into the mountains Wednesday to face a Utah State team that has beaten them three straight — and beaten them badly — at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum, which the Kenpom metric rates the fifth most formidable home-court advantage in Division I basketball.
Boise State (18-6, 8-3), Nevada and Utah State all have three conference losses. New Mexico has four.
It also continued a remarkable record in games immediately following a loss, a bedrock of the program’s culture instituted by Steve Fisher and his mantra about not letting one loss cost you another. The Aztecs are now 19-3 in their last 22 games after losing and have won 25 straight when the next game is at Viejas Arena.
On Friday, you had your pick of what was more impressive:
That the Aztecs built a 22-point halftime lead despite no points from leading scorers Matt Bradley and Darrion Trammell. Or that they didn’t engage in their usual second-half nap and allow the Broncos to get back in it.
That had been the focus at practice — and in a rare players-only meeting — since returning from Nevada and a 75-66 loss in which the Wolf Pack scored on 14 of its final 15 possessions. Boise State was slightly more efficient on offense in the second half, but not to the astonishing levels of Utah State, San Jose State and Nevada in recent weeks. The Broncos never got closer than 16.
Without Bradley and Trammell providing the offense, an unexpected source stepped up: Nathan Mensah. Remember him?
He finished with 17 points, his career high in a Mountain West game, to go with six rebounds, two blocks and 10 (yes, 10) fouls drawn.
They also got a 3 from … Aguek Arop, the first of his season and ninth in 119th career games.
The rest of the scoring was balanced in a game where the real story was SDSU’s depth against an already-depleted team that ranks 350th in Div. I in bench usage: 10 points from Keshad Johnson, nine from Seiko and Jaedon LeDee, seven from Arop and Lamont Butler.
Trammell finally scored on a short bank shot with 18:30 to go and finished with four points. It took Bradley until 9:16 left to make a basket and he finished with three points.
Boise State’s problems started before the game, when senior point guard Marcus Shaver Jr. showed up in a protective boot on the right ankle that he keeps hurting this season and was tweaked again at Air Force on Tuesday.
Then leading scorer Tyson Degenhart got his second foul with 8:38 left in the half in a seven-point game. Coach Leon Rice conferred with his staff and decided to leave him in. Forty-eight seconds later, he plowed over Mensah for a charge and No. 3.
Two minutes later, the margin was 19 after a pair of Seiko 3s and jump hook by Mensah over Mohamed Sylla, Degenhart’s raw replacement.
By intermission it was 43-21 thanks to a Mensah bank shot at the buzzer, completing his best half of the season and maybe his career. His line: 12 minutes, 12 points, 4-of-4 shooting, 4 of 4 at the line, three rebounds, one block, zero fouls committed, four fouls drawn.
The Broncos’ final numbers looked more like what we’re used to from SDSU’s defense, especially at sea level: 36.5% shooting, 2 of 18 behind the arc, nine first-half turnovers against the Aztecs’ full-court pressure and an 11-2 Aztecs margin in second-chance points.
Max Rice, the head coach’s son, led the Broncos with 16 points. Degenhart had nine, five below his average. Jace Whiting, the 6-foot-2 freshman from Burley, Idaho, who started in place of Shaver, had no points in 16 minutes.
