SDSU basketball releases Mountain West schedule that begins Dec. 4

Posted by Admin September 4, 2024 Basketball

The days of breathlessly awaiting the release of the Mountain West men’s basketball schedule, scanning your finger down the list of games and hoping you don’t see “at Wyoming” are over.

The 11-team conference finally switched to a 20-game schedule after more than a decade of resistance from San Diego State, meaning everyone plays everyone else, home and away — the trip to Laramie’s Arena-Auditorium at 7,220 feet included.

So the Aztecs will play in all 10 Mountain West venues this season, starting Dec. 4 at Fresno State — matching the earliest conference game in school history — and stretching over three months to a March 8 final against Nevada at Viejas Arena.

“It’s a full round robin,” said coach Brian Dutcher, who actively lobbied against moving from an 18- to 20-game schedule to provide more flexibility in the nonconference for building an NCAA Tournament résumé. “It used to be, you’d look to see the two teams everybody plays only one time. Now it’s a round robin so you’re playing everyone twice.”

Is he OK with that?

“I have to be,” Dutcher said. “That’s what it is.”

The conference sent schools a tentative schedule last month with the option to release it on their own terms. SDSU did Wednesday, joining Utah State and UNLV as the only teams to do so.

Many of the dates will likely change when a final schedule is announced next month after TV partners CBS and Fox pick their games with an option of moving them forward or back by a day. That also will determine the tricky parts of the schedule, because it can mean shorter turnarounds between games and whether the Aztecs have time to return home on back-to-back road trips.

The order of opponents, however, isn’t expected to change.

Following the Dec. 4 opener, the Aztecs go 24 days before playing another conference game — versus Utah State at home — then get their first of two byes on New Year’s Day. After that, they play 18 games over nine weeks, with their remaining bye coming in early February.

It starts innocuously enough. The Aztecs have won six straight at Fresno State’s Save Mart Center, including 73-41 last year; and they’re 10-0 at Viejas Arena against Utah State since the Aggies joined the Mountain West in 2013-14.

But the next two Saturdays feature road games against teams expected to be picked first and second in the conference: Boise State and New Mexico. The Aztecs have lost six of the last seven at Boise’s ExtraMile Arena and four of six at The Pit in Albuquerque.

There are three sets of back-to-back road trips: at Air Force (Jan. 21) and Nevada (Jan. 25), at Colorado State (Feb. 8) and San Jose State (Feb. 11), at Wyoming (March 1) and UNLV (March 4). Only the Air Force-Nevada double has two altitude games, where the effects are typically the most pronounced on days three and four in elevation.

There are a few anomalies. The Aztecs have just two weeks between both games against Air Force and San Jose State, but go more than five weeks before seeing Boise State and New Mexico for a second time.

Some other notables:

• The Mountain West is going with a Tuesday-Saturday format as its base days instead of Wednesday-Saturday of the past. Conference games technically can be played any day of the week, but there must be two full off days between them.

• The Aztecs get teams they historically beat at Viejas Arena in the early part of the schedule: Utah State, Air Force, Colorado State, UNLV, San Jose State and Wyoming.

• The byes both come before tough road games, meaning Dutcher and his staff will have a full week to prepare for Jan. 4 at Boise State and Feb. 8 at Colorado State.

• This is the fifth time in the past eight seasons that the Aztecs have closed against Nevada.

• The road games at Boise State (Jan. 4) and New Mexico (Jan. 11) plus UNLV at home (Jan. 18) are likely candidates for national telecasts on big-boy CBS or Fox, which means late morning or early afternoon Saturday tips.

• The expanded conference slate shortens the nonconference schedule by two games. SDSU is finalizing one more home date before announcing that, but we already know six: home games against Gonzaga and Cal Baptist, plus four on neutral courts (Creighton, Oregon and Texas A&M in Las Vegas over Thanksgiving week and Cal in San Jose on Dec. 21). The remaining five are all expected to be at Viejas Arena.