Overview: Air Force defeats SDSU
With the surprising loss, SDSU now awaits the start of March Madness in the national tournament to see where and who it will end up playing.
When the San Diego State University women’s basketball team arrived in Las Vegas for Sunday’s opening round of the Mountain West Conference Tournament, they likely had planned for a much longer stay in Sin City.
As it turned out, the Lady Aztecs were one-and-done, suffering an 83-76 loss to Air Force in a quarterfinal matchup.
With the surprising loss, SDSU now awaits the start of March Madness in the national tournament to see where and who it will end up playing.
“We are obviously really disappointed in the outcome. I thought Air Force played a great game today and deserved to win,” said SDSU head coach Stacie Terry-Hutson in remarks on goaztecs.com.
“But I don’t want to get too high or too low, because we’ve had a fantastic season this year,” she added, saying that one loss shouldn’t be allowed to water down an otherwise excellent season.
“To go 19-1 in this conference was a challenging feat. I’m proud of our kids, and we know this isn’t the last game for us. We’re going to bottle this up and get better for postseason play.”
Terry-Hutson ended up winning Mountain West Coach of the Year honors this season.
Air Force, which lost both regular-season games to SDSU (62-51, 74-57) avenged a loss only five days earlier to the top-seeded Lady Aztecs in Colorado Springs.
Air Force came into the post-season league tourney as the ninth-seed team, having knocked off eighth-seeded Wyoming last Saturday in the first round of the tournament.
Naomi Panganiban led SDSU with 29 points in the loss.
SDSU men open tourney play on Thursday
The San Diego State men’s basketball team has a first-round bye and will open MWC tourney play on Thursday, March 12, in Las Vegas.
SDSU finished its regular-season action Friday night at home with an 89-86 win over UNLV.
