San Diego State strangles Cal offense, holds Golden Bears to 50 points after barely making it to arena on time

SAN JOSE — San Diego State and Cal’s men’s basketball matchup on Saturday night at SAP Center could truthfully be described as the Adversity Bowl.

One team barely made it to the arena before tipoff. The other had to cancel shootaround after a rim was about six inches short of regulation height.

Those circumstances created a first-half rock fight that would have made old-school basketball fans proud. San Diego State led 25-16 at halftime after making the game’s first 3-pointer with 44 seconds remaining in the first half.

The Aztecs picked up right where they left off to start the second half. SDSU made seven of its first nine attempts from deep and buried Cal under a sudden avalanche of offense, building a 29-point lead at the peak and breaking the Bears’ will en route to a 71-50 win.

“We were supposed to fly out yesterday at 4:40. Canceled,” said SDSU coach Brian Dutcher. “We drove up to Orange County to try to fly out of Orange County Airport, because our assistant, Ryan Badrtalei, who worked at Irvine, told me it’s never foggy in Irvine. And it was so foggy I couldn’t see anything. But I kept him. I didn’t fire him.”

The Aztecs couldn’t fly out of Irvine either. So they bused to Ontario, where there was a flight available for 18 of their personnel.

Eighteen SDSU team members made it onto that plane, which arrived in San Jose around 1:55 p.m. The walk-ons and other staffers, meanwhile, had to bus up to SAP Center. They arrived at the arena seven minutes before tipoff.

Cal, meanwhile, arrived bright and early at 9:30 a.m. Saturday for a scheduled shootaround. There was only one problem – one of the rims was not right.

“You could look at a million things,” Cal coach Mark Madsen said. “If I had to guess for San Diego State, they just barely got here today. If I had to guess for us, when we showed up at shootaround, the rims were a half foot low, and we had to cancel our shootaround.

“But we can’t make excuses for that. We can’t say that’s why we didn’t shoot well, because if we made the extra pass more, if we found our teammates more, you can still get over that hump.”

Cal (7-5, 0-1 ACC) had an exceptionally difficult time finding the range on Saturday night. The Bears didn’t make their first 3-pointer until the second half and finished with only five for the game.

The Aztecs’ trademark disruptive defense held the Bears to 25% shooting overall, and Cal was out of sorts all night long.

“In the paint, they have an elite shot blocker,” said Cal center Mady Sissoko. “They have good rim protectors. We have to learn how to pass the ball more and how to kick out for a couple more (shots).”

San Diego State (8-2, 1-0 Mountain West) could have folded under the weight of the challenges foisted upon them. Instead, after a lengthy adjustment period, the Aztecs emerged stronger.

“It gave us an opportunity to come together closer,” said SDSU guard Nick Boyd. “We were sitting in airports together, sat in lobbies of hotels trying to figure it out. We had time to hang out with each other. It shows that we’re locked in more than anything.

“We didn’t have the opportunity to shoot the night before or shoot around early today, but if we’re focused mentally, we can do whatever we want.”