San Diego State easily set aside Yale in Spokane Sunday to reach the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row.
No. 5 SDSU beat No. 13 Yale 85-57 in East Region action, and another storybook run is possible for the Aztecs, but to make it so, they must take down UConn in a rematch of the 2023 national championship game.
That means being David to UConn’s Goliath – and the giant beat them easily last year. Moreover, Goliath is the No. 1 seed in the entire tournament, but that’s the Aztecs’ draw, as they travel to Boston – an easy distance from UConn – to face the Huskies (33-3) at 4:40 p.m. Thursday.
“Obviously they won a national championship last year, but I feel like we were right there,” Darrion Trammell said. “Just to get another chance at it, I think we’re up for the opportunity. We have the team to do it.”
To earn the right to move on, SDSU (26-10) left behind its recent spate of slow starts, jumping out to a 10-0 lead and barely letting up as the game progressed.
They held Yale (23-10) to 21 points, the Bulldogs’ lowest production in the first half this season, while also handing them their biggest deficit of the year. Yale, down 45-21 Sunday, previously had trailed by no more than 10 at the half.
Jaedon LeDee opened the scoring and was on fire in the first 12 minutes, with 15 points, even from long distance. The first of his rare three pointers gave SDSU the 10-0 lead, and when Yale’s August Mahoney broke through moments later after the Bulldogs had started the game 0-for-5 – LeDee hit another to restore the 10-point advantage.
And he wasn’t the only one. Elijah Saunders, cold since the Mountain West championship in Las Vegas, had his own pair of back-to-back threes, and Lamont Butler, Miles Byrd and Trammell soon joined in the fun.
Yale couldn’t get anything going as SDSU also for a time shut down the hero, John Poulakidas, in the Bulldogs’ first-round upset win over Auburn.
San Diego State didn’t let up after the break and though Poulakidas came on in the second half to score nine, Yale’s top scorer, Bez Mbeng, could only manage 12 points for the game as SDSU held the Bulldogs to 32% shooting.
“We limited them to tough shots, tough twos. That’s what the game plan was,” LeDee said. “… We limited them to their second-chance points and we hit the glass pretty hard.”
The Aztecs, though subject to droughts, were hot most of the game, at one point shooting 60%. They finished at 52% as LeDee, who left the game with 8:40 minutes remaining, led all scorers with 26, adding nine rebounds.
Trammell had a season high with 18 points and Byrd put up nine. And the team, last in their conference in three-point shooting percentage, went 13-of-27 from long distance, a season high.
“We were getting open shots,” Trammell said. “We’ve been putting in the time, putting in the work, and there’s no reason to go out there and be hesitant. So I think we just let it fly tonight.”
The rout was so thorough – the Aztecs’ lead ballooned to 30 soon after the clock crossed the 10-minute mark – that SDSU subbed in the rarely seen Cade Alger, BJ Davis, Cam Lawin, Demarshay Johnson Jr. and Ryan Schwarz late. Davis had four points on two free throws and a jumper, and Alger added two.
Despite UConn’s dominance – they finished the season atop the Associated Press Top 25 – SDSU’s 2024 tournament performance has similarities to 2023’s Cinderella run.
With Sunday’s win, SDSU knocked out a No. 13 tournament seed for the second year in a row. Last year, they denied Furman, on the way to facing No. 1 seed Alabama in a game they were not expected to win. Yet they did, 71-64.
“We’re going to go in with a game plan and with a bunch of guys that believe they can win and we’ll see how it ends,” head coach Brian Dutcher said of Thursday’s matchup.
The Mountain West had six teams in this year’s tournament. Only San Diego State, which is going to the Sweet 16 in consecutive years for the first time, remains after Utah State suffered a blowout loss Sunday at the hands of Purdue.
UConn defeated Northwestern (22-12) 75-58 to make the Sweet 16.
Updated 10:45 p.m. March 24, 2024
