In college basketball, as in most sports, you can expect a certain amount of intensity from a team that got blown out when they have a rematch. And when that happens in back-to-back games, you’ve got a really interesting handicapping situation.
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In the Mountain West Conference, we get confronted by this situation, as the schedule calls for consecutive games in the same location to cut down on travel.
We’ll break down one of these rematches for late Sunday night, and we recommend that you take it out for a ride at 1Vice.
San Diego State Aztecs at Air Force Falcons Picks
When: 10 PM ET
College Basketball Betting Odds: San Diego State -17
On Friday night, the San Diego Aztecs administered a frightful beating. That is the only way to put it. At the half, they led the Air Force Falcons 52-16, and the lead ballooned to 80-28 at one point. The Falcons started making some shots in the second half to make the final 98-61.
SDSU coach Brian Dutcher did some tinkering with his lineup, putting Aguek Arop and Adam Seiko onto the second unit. Both of them had 14 points, and Arop was particularly sensational, adding three steals in a stint that lasted only ten minutes.
Arop apparently was bothered by the altitude, and that brings up an interesting subject, because that could indeed be a factor. So the question is whether SDSU is helped a little by sticking around and getting a little more “used to it,” acknowledging that these pairs of games take place at the same location.
It would be natural to pre-suppose that Air Force is going to come out with a lot of fire, seething for some payback. Sure, that could conceivably happen.
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But Friday’s massacre was not the by-product of Air Force coming out flat. Dutcher came in with a number of offensive sets to combat the Falcons’ matchup zone. And while the Aztecs made some triples, what they really did was dominate the boards. SDSU pulled down 20 offensive rebounds, to only three for Air Force.
Things got bad enough in the first half that Falcon coach Joe Scott got out of the zone and went to a man-to-man defense. Whether he’s going to do that again isn’t known, but he may do it since matchup zones tend to give those offensive boards so easily.
For some perspective, consider that Air Force shot 55% for the game, scored 30 of the game’s last 45 points and STILL lost by 37. And as they scored a lot of gratuitous points (33 in the last ten minutes), it came against mostly freshmen and walk-ons Dutcher wanted to get into the game.
Oh, and did we mention that Air Force also committed 27 turnovers?
Until the Falcons demonstrate that they can stop the offensive sets Dutcher is throwing out there, we expect he’ll keep running them. And he will do so with a main rotation that got a lot of rest with the blowout.
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And listen – if you can’t rebound, you can’t rebound. And Air Force is one of the least effective rebounding teams in the nation.If you really wanted to get specific about rebounding percentages,they are 346th out of 357 schools on the offensive end and 334th on the defensive end.
So while they may have some emotion – and maybe a lot of anger – on their side, the fundamentals here greatly favor the Aztecs. And I would recommend laying the points.
