To Chill or Not to Chill: San Diego State excitement grows behind BJ Davis’ 28 points over UCLA

Sunday evening the college basketball scene in San Diego heated up with all the news of the highly anticipated ‘secret scrimmage’.

Each team seems to have these pseudo-exhibition games that take place in a private gym, at an undisclosed time, with a secret lineup. Except these days the secret is usually out—as they end up being reported on just like any other game during the season. So go figure.

Well, this season’s scrimmage took place Sunday at 12noon and it was the Aztecs vs Bruins, in Pauly Pavilion, on the campus of UCLA.

Now you know anytime us Aztecs get to take on the Bruins at basketball, football, baseball, flip-cup, those competitive juices began to boil. So it was with great pleasure to see our Aztecs take the meaningless victory and assign it all kind of excitement within the fan base.

72-67 was the final as San Diego State defeated UCLA with just eight players available for this contest. A screenshot of the box score was made available by Jeff Goodman, co-founder of Field of 68.

Immediately guard BJ Davis’ performance jumps off the page. 28 points total on 8 of 9 field goals, 6-7 three pointers, 6 free throws, and 6 rebounds was not something Aztec Nation was prepared to read. Scrimmage or not, this is a very impressive stat line for anyone, on any team, at any level of ball.

True sophomore, BJ Davis appeared in 12 games all of the 2023-2024 season as a reserve. He averaged 1.2 points and 0.4 rebounds in 67 minutes of floor time. The numbers are obviously low when sitting behind senior guards Lamont Butler and Darrion Trammell—two team leaders who previously guided the program to a National Championship game.

But who better to have on the court than the young Davis who spent an entire season gleaning from those two, day in and day out.

This Summer in the Swish League Pro-Am, BJ Davis showed off his game in ways Aztec Nation hoped he would—at times taking it upon himself to will his team to success. Sons of Montezuma being the official broadcast partner of the Swish League in 2024 was able to view his progression as a player up close and take note of his development early on.

But what does it all mean? Should we be fired up or chill out?

Reasons to Chill

UCLA actively played 11 deep, which will not be the normal scenario come regular season time. Skyy Clark and Kobe Johnson were the Bruins two big portal additions. They both played 29 and 21 minutes of clock time.

The most notable absentee to the Bruins roster was their big 7’3″ center, sophomore Aday Mara from Spain. Though he has didn’t bring a huge scoring presence to the Bruins in his freshman season, you just can’t replace 7’3″ on a court.

This Aztecs team committed 24 turnovers. Good Lord that’s a lot of turnovers. That kind of output is rarely going to get you a favorable outcome, in a true game situation, and against quality opponents.

Forget about March, if this team is to compete right out of the gate in November with the brutal opening stretch they have against the likes of UCSD, Gonzaga, Creighton, Oregon, and Texas A&M, they cannot afford to have these turnovers.

Reasons NOT to Chill

The Aztecs were without both of their primary ball handlers. For the sake of this argument you have to use this as a reason to be fired up. Both guards Nick Boyd and Wayne McKinney III are figured to be responsible in the majority of the ball handling duties. You have to like your chances of the turnover numbers settling down a bit if that is the case.

Depth however is crucial with a young team. Many of the younger players got such a valuable experience in this victory. There’s a lot of expectation on the shoulders of the back court—including Reese Waters and his preseason All-Conference team ranking.

The sharp shooter Waters, just gives a whole different dimension of scoring to the Aztecs when he’s pouring out buckets on the court. Insert him into this lineup and crazy things might’ve happened in this game.

This UCLA team is currently ranked at 26 in KenPom. San Diego State stands at 48. That’s a pretty big jump if this victory stands in regular season play. So you have to like the chances of the Aztecs being able to jump out early and surprise some folks.

Lastly, there’s no such thing as a good loss. If the Aztecs had dropped this game, the same reasons to be excited would’ve been used as scapegoat’s as to why they didn’t perform well enough to get the dub. But that’s not the case here.

The Aztecs figured a way to seal the deal, gain some early momentum in some unlikely places, pack on a little experience to the younger guys on the roster, and simultaneously get the fanbase excited for a new season of Aztecs hoops on the Mesa.

Proceed to get fired up everyone. We know we are.