San Diego State lost to Boise St. 61-46 Sunday afternoon in Boise, Idaho, a game in which the Aztecs never held the lead.
Last season at Boise St. the Aztecs were able to pull of a remarkable comeback that was capped off by a go-ahead three-pointer from then-junior forward Dwayne Polee II to give the team the win.
This year there was no such luck, and the team was never able to rebound from a sluggish start to the game.
SDSU shot 25 percent from the field and were 20 percent shooting 3-pointers in the first half.
“I thought we played hard early on but we didn’t play smart enough,” said coach Steve Fisher postgame via GoAztecs.com. ” I thought our effort was there. We weren’t very good offensively and we were not quite with it enough from the neck up to say this is what they want to do to create three-point shot opportunities.”
The closest the Aztecs cut the deficit was to four with about 15 minutes left in the second half, but the Broncos pulled away after that and never looked back.
Just like in the team’s win against Nevada J.J. O’Brien led in points with 16 and also grabbed 10 rebounds.
It was his third double-double of the season and the eighth of his career.
Boise St. senior guard Derrick Marks led the way for the Broncos with 19 points. He remains the leading scorer in the Mountain West Conference with 19.8 per game
The Broncos were able to hit 10 3-pointers, a part of their game that Fisher hoped to bottle up.
“We didn’t play with enough intelligence. Our number one bullet point was to defend the three,” Fisher said. “We wanted to keep them under five three’s for the game. And they had five in the first five minutes.”
SDSU comes back to play Wyoming this Wednesday at 8 p.m., the team they hold the tiebreaker over for first place in the Mountain West.