LOGAN, Utah – Three thoughts on San Diego State’s 71-66 loss at Utah State on Saturday:
1. The race
The Aztecs had a chance to build a two-game cushion over Utah State in the Mountain West with nine games to play, including a Feb. 25 game against the Aggies at Viejas Arena. Didn’t happen.
We’ve got ourselves a horse race now, with standings that look like this:
Utah State: 9-2
SDSU: 9-2
New Mexico: 9-2.
Nevada: 8-3.
Grand Canyon: 7-3.
“It’s a heck of a Mountain West right now,” Aztecs coach Brian Dutcher said. “It’s interesting, because it’s taken us until the second half (of the conference schedule) to play one game against Utah State, and New Mexico hasn’t played them yet.
“Everybody’s got a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of basketball left in this conference. It will be fun to watch down the stretch.”
The Aztecs have the most favorable schedule, already playing on the road against everyone else in the top five except New Mexico. Utah State still must go to New Mexico and Nevada. New Mexico must go to Utah State, Grand Canyon and Nevada.
The Aztecs will be favored in the next five: Wyoming, at Air Force, Nevada, Grand Canyon and at Colorado State. Figure those are all must-wins if they want at least a share of the title.
The final four games are trickier: Utah State, at New Mexico, at Boise State, UNLV.
What gets at least a share of the title? 17-3? 16-4?
The Kenpom metric projects SDSU, Utah State and New Mexico will finish in a three-way tie at 15-5.
SDSU senior guard Reese Dixon-Waters is thinking more like 18-2.
“We’ve got to win them all, in my opinion,” he said. “I don’t think we can afford to lose another one. It’s my last year in college and this is the last time San Diego State is going to be in the Mountain West, so I don’t want to be second place to anybody.”
Out with an injury, San Diego State’s Magoon Gwath smiles before San Diego State’s Jan. 21, 2026 game against Grand Canyon at GCU Arena in Phoenix. (Darryl Webb, for The San Diego Union-Tribune)
2. Injury demons
The next time the Aztecs play at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum, maybe they should bring some Holy Water and sprinkle it on the court in front of the visitor’s bench.
To exorcise the demons.
For the third time in six years, an Aztecs starter has gone down just steps from the bench.
In 2021, Matt Mitchell’s knee buckled in what looked like a season-ending injury that turned out to be a bone bruise. Last year, Magoon Gwath’s knee buckled along the baseline, an injury that ultimately required surgery and a six-month rehabilitation.
Midway through the second half Saturday, Dixon-Waters landed on a Utah State player’s foot during an Aggies jumper from the left wing, then stepped back and rolled it even worse on someone’s foot sitting on the Aztecs bench. He pounded the floor in pain, subbed out and returned to the game later in the half, although he was not as effective as before.
Dixon-Waters said “it’s fine,” but the real test with sprained ankles typically comes from swelling the next day. And the Aztecs’ next game is Tuesday, not the usual Wednesday.
SDSU was already without 40% of its starting lineup again … and might be for another couple weeks, Dutcher admitted afterward.
Gwath has missed four games with a hip injury, and Dutcher hinted he doesn’t expect him to play in either game in the upcoming week.
Point guard Elzie Harrington had a better chance of playing Saturday after missing Wednesday’s 73-50 win against Colorado State with what was described as “lower leg pain.” But he was a late scratch again and was fitted with a knee-high walking boot.
“Right now, we’re going to err on the side of caution, even though I think Elzie could play,” Dutcher said. “We’re trying to manage his pain and get him where it’s not a lingering thing. To protect him from himself, we’ve decided to sit him out and let him heal in a walking boot for the next two weeks. … The doctors feel like he needs to rest.”
The schedule, thankfully, works in the Aztecs’ favor. They host Wyoming at sea level on Tuesday, a team they beat by 17 at 7,220 feet last month. Then they’re at winless Air Force on Saturday. There’s no midweek game before hosting Nevada on Feb. 14.
The plan is to have both healthy and re-acclimated by the closing stretch that will likely decide the conference race.
“We don’t ever want anybody out,” Dixon-Waters said, “but as a player, if somebody goes down, what you want is to be the next man up. I think we have guys who are hungry and ready to be out there. We want Elzie and Goon back out there, but we have a deep team, so we’re going to have to step up and make plays.”
San Diego State guard Miles Byrd (21) reacts after getting called for a foul against Utah State guard Kolby King on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026, in Logan.
3. Byrd hunting
The conversation about the Mountain West’s best student section no longer involves SDSU’s “The Show,” not with the addition of Grand Canyon this season. Now it’s a debate between the “Havocs” and “The Hurd.”
GCU’s Havocs might be slightly louder and better dancers, but Utah State’s Hurd is more creative and incisive. Both camp out in the days before a big game, but the Hurd gets the nod for doing it in 20-degree weather and, on Thursday, in frozen fog.
Utah State coach Jerrod Calhoun visited them one frigid night and asked the administration to let them into the toasty arena at 9 a.m. for the 11 a.m. tip instead of the planned 9:45.
“The Hurd kindly declined,” Calhoun said. “They said they’re tougher than that. … That is a tough group of students.”
They distribute “The Bull Sheet” for each game with digs at the opposing school and its players. Volume 55, Issue 9 focused almost exclusively on Miles Byrd, an easy target given his positively unstoic approach to the game.
Students held up a giant picture of the 6-foot-6 junior with his hands on his head in apparent distress. One sign said: “Byrd hunting hasn’t ended in Logan.”
The entire front page of The Bull Sheet was devoted to him as well.
“We’re not gonna lie,” it said, “the Aztecs have been good for the past couple of decades. The reason why is that all of their star players behaved like Aztec alumnus Kawhi Leonard: unemotional, robotic freaks who do not care about anything other than basketball. Jaedon LeDee, Lamont Butler, Matt Bradley and Nathan Mensah were all built and conditioned in a lab to play basketball.
“All that to say, the reason SDSU has been down this year is that they are led by Miles Byrd, the most emotional guy in college basketball. … We cannot stress enough how easy it is to get into this guy’s head.”
It appears to be working. In two games in Logan, both losses, Byrd shot a combined 5 of 24 overall and 2 of 15 behind the arc.
The Bull Sheet, which bills itself as “a parody newsletter and anything said is non-actionable,” also took a shot at The Show:
“Their motto is ‘often imitated, never duplicated.’ Out of respect to their student section, we won’t try to replicate them by having 100 of the most uninterested frat guys just standing there and doing absolutely nothing. … We don’t get why Aggie Nation still cares about The Show; they’ve been dead since COVID.”