Aztecs Drop Behind UTEP in the Stretch

SAN DIEGO —  For 28 minutes Thursday night, it appeared as if San Diego State might be on its way to another important Western Athletic Conference victory.

The Aztecs were leading Texas El Paso by two points and had the ball. Six useless possessions later, the Aztecs were down by seven on their way to a 76-65 defeat in front of 5,675 at the San Diego Sports Arena.

“We got in one stretch there where we were just plain bilious,” SDSU Coach Jim Brandenburg said. “We just let them make a run, and that became the margin for the game.”

The Aztecs were leading, 53-51, with 12:36 to play when their troubles began. It was a team effort.

The 3-minute sequence started with two off-balance shots by Tony Ross, continued with an ill-advised try by Michael Best and a turnover on an offensive foul by Mitch McMullen and ended with a bad-pass turnover by Shawn Bell and a missed driving layup by Bryan Williams.

The Miners responded with nine consecutive points to take a 60-53 lead with 9:02 left. It was part of a 20-4 UTEP run that gave the Miners a 71-57 lead with 2:04 remaining.

“It’s the best 10 minutes we’ve played in a while,” UTEP Coach Don Haskins said. “I thought our defense toughened up, and we finally made some shots at the end.”

The loss was the Aztecs’ third in a row after a 2-0 conference start and dropped their record to 8-7. It was the Miners’ fourth WAC victory in five games, 15th in 17 games overall and eighth in a row against the Aztecs.

Junior forward Antonio Davis had a game-high 25 points for UTEP, and his 11 rebounds shared game honors with SDSU forward Sam Johnson. Senior guard Tim Hardaway had 22 points, 7 rebounds and 12 assists for the Miners.

Bell and Best had 18 points each to lead SDSU. Ross, the team’s leading scorer the past 2 seasons, missed all four of his shots from the field and was shut out for the first time in 72 games as an Aztec.

Ross’ performance was a small part of another poor shooting game for the Aztecs, who made 27 of 66 attempts (40.9%). It was the fourth consecutive game in which they shot less than 45%

“It’s very obvious that our offensive execution and shot discipline is gone,” Brandenburg said. “We have gone into a haphazard offense instead of working within the system.”

That was especially true during the late swoon, but the Aztecs problems went deeper than bad shot selection. The Miners simply overran them on the boards, outrebounding the Aztecs, 47-40. UTEP was especially active on the offensive end, coming within one (22-21) of outrebounding SDSU there.

Five of Davis’ 11 rebounds and 9 of 11 by forward Johnny Melvin, a 6-foot 4-inch freshman, were offensive.

“One of my teams hasn’t been beaten up like that on the boards in a long time,” Brandenburg said.

Brandenburg said some of the difficulties could be attributed to injury problems that have followed the Aztecs for the past 2 weeks.

Johnson, who has been slowed by a sprained ankle, made his first start at power forward in three games. McMullen played despite a sore Achilles tendon. Best sprained his ankle in practice Wednesday. And reserve guard Rodney Jones is out at least one more game after spraining his left ankle and foot Saturday at Utah.

“I was a half step slow,” Best said, “and it seemed like the team was, too. There wasn’t a lot of ball movement.”

The first half was played high above and well below the rim as the Miners established early their control of the boards (28-21), blocked five shots and made six steals.

Greg Foster, the Miners’ 7-foot junior transfer from UCLA, blocked three of his game-high four shots in the half.

The Aztecs got most of their offense from the 3-point shooting of Best and the inside play of McMullen.

Best had 9 of his 18 points on first-half 3-pointers. McMullen, who picked up his second personal foul just 2:02 into the game and was shut out for the first 12:28, came on to score eight points in the final 7:32 of the half and finished with 12.

McMullen’s surge helped the Aztecs rally from what was as much as a 6-point deficit (15-9 at 13:33) to take the lead, 28-27, on his two free throws at 3:10. UTEP took a 36-34 halftime lead on Melvin’s 9-foot bank shot.

The Aztecs turned to a 2-3 zone defense early in an effort to slow down the Miners. It was the second game in a row the Aztecs have used primarily a zone defense after playing man-to-man almost entirely through their first 13 games.

“They are not a great outside shooting team, and we really thought the zone would really slow them down,” Brandenburg said. “It did slow them down, but we did not rebound out of the zone as well as we needed to. The zone bothered UTEP, it really did, we just didn’t rebound, and they got the second shots.”