San Diego State brings new roster, familiar tenets into West Coast showdown with No. 4 Gonzaga

Nov. 17—SAN DIEGO — Gonzaga’s Mark Few and San Diego State’s Brian Dutcher bumped into each other last month at joint West Coast Conference/Mountain West Conference Media Day in Las Vegas.

The coaches didn’t cover much ground during a brief conversation, chatting just long enough to trade a few surface-level thoughts on their new rosters before both were whisked away to their next media obligation.

“He was talking about all his new guys, I was like, I know you’re going to play great defense and I know you’re going to rebound,” Few said on Oct. 17. “Those are givens with San Diego State.”

The givens exist on both sides of Monday’s matchup between fourth-ranked Gonzaga (3-0) and San Diego State (2-0) at 7 p.m. (CBSSN) at Viejas Arena.

When San Diego State hung 100 points on Division III Occidental College last Tuesday, Dutcher was worried his team’s outside shooting exhibition — the Aztecs connected 18 times from behind the 3-point line in the 51-point win over Occidental — may have been premature.

“I wish we could’ve saved some of those 3’s,” Dutcher told reporters. “You know, put them in the bank and brought them back out against Gonzaga.”

It’ll be a clash of styles and future Pac-12 Conference foes when the Aztecs and Zags take the floor in the second game of a home-and-home series that started last year in Spokane when Dutcher’s team broke away toward the end of the second half, winning 84-74 and handing GU its first double-digit home loss since 2015.

San Diego State looks significantly different than it did last season after losing six of its top seven scorers to graduation or the transfer portal, and after a few notable injuries, it’s also possible the Aztecs will hardly resemble the team that entered preseason training camp more than a month ago.

Reese Waters, a 6-foot-6 senior guard who was SDSU’s top scorer with 22 points last season in the win over Gonzaga, is expected to miss a few more weeks with a stress fracture. The Aztecs may resort to an even smaller look…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/san-diego-state-brings-roster-030300254.html

Author : The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

Publish date : 2024-11-18 03:03:00

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