after his 21st-ranked team \u2014 which will get special mention here \u2014 won 84-68<\/a>, one week after edging UC San Diego 80-74 in La Jolla.<\/p>\nThe October exhibition demonstrated that Harrington, 20, and Cherry, 23, have rebounded well from injury-shortened seasons. And it confirmed that guard Latrell Davis, a redshirt last year, is a prototypical SDSU player. Eager to defend and tough.<\/p>\n
Tae Simmons was more fluid in traffic. The 235-pounder, listed at 6-6, made a smart reverse dunk against high-altitude USC. He ran the court better, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like what they\u2019re doing with Simmons \u2014 playing him in the midpost and throwing it to him in transition,\u201d Musselman said.<\/p>\n
Exhibitions being what they are, coach Brian Dutcher didn\u2019t go on about SDSU\u2019s 12 first-half turnovers. Or hot-shooting USC building up a 23\u2013point lead in the first half.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to be good, we\u2019re going to be good,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen we\u2019re good, I don\u2019t know. But in the 26 years I\u2019ve been here, Aztecs basketball has always gotten better as the season went on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aztecs fans have another reason to believe: the NCAA Tournament has been expanded from 68 to 74 games.<\/p>\n
The exhibitions against No. 21 USC and No. 5 Arizona gave Dutcher\u2019s team a feel of the top-tier length it may encounter against UCLA and BYU, two top-20 teams on its non-conference schedule, or in the NCAAs.<\/p>\n
But big-boy games are further bringing home an inconvenient truth:<\/p>\n
College basketball\u2019s big spenders have far more upside, year in and year out, than SDSU can be rightly expected to match.<\/p>\n
USC outspends SDSU about three to one.<\/p>\n
Musselman took two Arkansas teams to the big tournament\u2019s final eight. His USC roster appears to have more talent than those.<\/p>\n
Availability is a question mark. Several players\u2019 medical histories aren\u2019t great.<\/p>\n
But a trip to USC\u2019s first men\u2019s Final Four since 1954 wouldn\u2019t be a big surprise.<\/p>\n
USC posed SDSU with more length and athleticism than it will see in the Pac-12, even from No. 15 Gonzaga.<\/p>\n
This, despite USC lacking its 7-1 sophomore center who played often for UConn last year and a 6-foot-8 forward who is ESPN\u2019s No. 5-ranked freshman and snatches the ball with one hand like it\u2019s a grapefruit.<\/p>\n
The duo\u2019s absence freed up potential NBA lottery pick Alijah Arenas \u2014 a 6-7 guard whose father, Gilbert Arenas, was an NBA All-Star \u2014 to hit SDSU with 22 points and 12 rebounds in 33 minutes.<\/p>\n
It opened up more opportunity for a pair of 19-year-old twins, Adonis Ratfliff (7-0) and Darius Ratliff (6-11) whose father, Theo, was an NBA All-Star. Two other tall Trojans, each 6-10, troubled SDSU. So did powerful guard Rodney Rice, who\u2019ll be 24 next month.<\/p>\n
San Diego State isn\u2019t complaining. There\u2019s ample opportunity in the Pac-12.<\/p>\n
But college basketball\u2019s economic realities are more formidable than four years ago when Dutcher\u2019s program reached the national championship game \u2014 a feat that can\u2019t be mentioned too often.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Diego State basketball fans were back at it Friday night. A nearly full-house crowd showed up for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1327,181,74,76,75,305,127],"class_list":["post-507109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-college-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sdsu-aztecs","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}