Aztecs in ‘full urgency mode’ with Utah Valley coming to Viejas Arena

San Diego State’s basketball team watches a ton of film, of themselves, of opponents.

Before practice Tuesday, they watched a team from three years ago: San Diego State.

It was a team that lost two of three games at the Maui Invitational, then returned to the Mainland and needed a buzzer-beater to escape at home against UC Irvine, barely beat Troy and lost to St. Mary’s. And then won 25 of its next 28 to reach the national championship game.

“They were just, like, dawgs,” Pharaoh Compton said. “Everybody was helping each other.”

The exercise was to provide motivation, inspiration and perhaps recollection for an Aztecs program that suddenly, inexplicably has lost its way, entering December with a 3-3 record and computer metrics unbecoming of a team billed as one of the best in school history.

Now they get the Utah Valley Wolverines on Wednesday night at Viejas Arena, statistically the sternest test of their nonconference home schedule that is coming off wins by 23 and 44. And plays the sort of modern, small-ball lineup – all five starters are between 6-foot-4 and 6-8 – that has given the vaunted Aztecs defense fits.

Is there a sense of urgency?

“Oh, we’re on full urgency mode,” coach Brian Dutcher said. “We’ve lost three out of four games. How can you not be on urgency mode?”

The release of the NCAA’s NET metric on Monday only heightened that. The Aztecs were 123, then slipped to 126 the following day after Troy lost at home against West Georgia, making SDSU’s Troy loss at home last month sting even more.

It is the lowest they’ve been in the past six seasons of the NET. Kenpom is more favorable, dropping them to 48 after starting the season at 29 and briefly rising to 25 following a 32-point opening win against Long Beach State. The others aren’t so kind: 56 in Bart Torvik’s T-rank, 90 in ESPN’s BPI, 130 in SOR, 135 in KPI – nowhere near the kind of numbers conferred an at-large NCAA berth.

Metrics this early in the season can swing wildly, though, and often produce disparate assessments with such a small sample size (Yale is 25 in the NET, one spot ahead of North Carolina). And the Aztecs can take solace from 2021-22, when they opened at 113 in the NET, methodically climbed to 24 and made the NCAA Tournament.

But none of that is going to happen if they don’t start guarding, like immediately.

Consider: Over the past two weeks, they rank 252nd nationally in defensive efficiency after allowing 108 points against Troy, 94 against Michigan and 91 against Baylor.

“We know we have to play better defensively, everybody knows that,” Dutcher said. “You don’t have to be a coach to even know that. We have to be better defensively. We have to find a way to keep grinding to get there.

“The hard thing with coaching is do we have guys who are incapable of playing in the scheme we want to play, or do they just need to put more into it to make it more successful? Do you have to change how you play based on whatever personnel this team has, or do you work them harder at what you do and hopefully they get there?”

The Aztecs have devoted practice time to what Dutcher describes as “alternative defenses,” but for the time being he said “we’re going to continue to do what we do and fight through.”

If the scheme isn’t going to change, then the mentality must.

“I think we have shied away from what we do here at San Diego State,” junior Miles Heide said. “We need to get back to what we do: defense and rebounding. I think it’s a mentality thing, everybody sacrificing what they have going on offense to lock in on defense.

“It’s just us getting back to our standard of basketball, that’s the biggest thing for us.”

Added Compton: “This is an important game. We have to make a statement on defense.”

After watching clips of the 2022-23 Aztecs who ranked fourth nationally in defensive efficiency, the players responded with one of their better practices of the season, focused, energetic, resolute. But practice hasn’t been the problem.

“In practice, we guard really well,” freshman Elzie Harrington said after they closed the Players Era Festival with a 91-81 loss against Baylor. “It’s just translating it to games, just taking pride in it.”

They’ll have plenty of practices to fix things, with a stretch of only two games over 20 days.

“Like I always say, the season is a journey,” Dutcher said. “Sometimes we’re going to be really good at the start of the journey. We’re not really good at the start of this journey. Can we get there? Yes. Will we get there? We will see.

“You look at all the talent, but it’s not the talent that matters, it’s the team that matters. We have to take the talent and make this a better team.”