The Aztecs remedy to breakthrough offensively is totally free

So the Aztecs dropped another home loss in conference play this past weekend and I don’t know what’s worse—the actual loss or having to talk about it.

Gone is a 67-home game win streak against quad-3 or below teams—snapped. A loss to a team that has been under the Aztecs foot for much the last decade in UNLV, 76-68. An unfortunate setback in the Mountain West season standings with two very winnable road games on deck this week, at Air Force and at Nevada.

On Saturday thanks to Jared Coleman-Jones’ two free throws a minute & a half in—the Viejas arena crowd were able to stop clapping and take their seats. Had he not gone to the line they very well may have been left there clapping a full six minutes.

A BJ Davis 3-pointer cut UNLV’s lead down by 1 in the early going but the Aztecs played catch-up the rest of the night.

Here are 3 things that caught our eye.

Live by the 3 Die by the 3

It was a frustrating night of offensive droughts, bad officiating, and defensive lapses, but it started off with bad shot selection.

“When they’re wide open and they’re created by the offense and they miss them, you can’t go in and say don’t take a wide open shot.” said head coach Brian Dutcher in postgame.

To some that quote makes sense. You have a wide open jumper, you’ve got to take what the defense gives you and knock down the shot. To others it makes them cringe and squirm in their seats. The 3-ball is what the defense wants you to take—force you to take a low percentage shot and miss.

Both sides of the argument hold their merits. The UNLV defense and others in the past have goaded SDSU in to wasting these kind of possessions with misses. But are they being fooled by the defense?

The Aztecs on the season are 5th in the conference hitting at 35% behind the arc. Just last game against Colorado State, the same Rams team who dominated UNLV a week and a half ago, the Aztecs were just 9-25 in three pointers and still walked away victoriously. This night they were 9 of 28.

So what’s the difference?

“The ones we talked about that we have to do better at—when you kick it out and it’s not a clean catch” Dutcher explained. “it’s like shot fake it or move it. Don’t shoot the ones where your feet aren’t set and the catch wasn’t clean.”

Taking open shots is one thing, but for clarity to start the game SDSU took and missed five 3-point shots. Open or not, that cannot be the opening mentality to establishing your offensive game plan can it? If you make some fine—but if you miss five it’s already implanted in your team’s collective brain that the ball is just not going in the hoop on this day.

The Journey

The Aztecs just didn’t make enough timely plays even after a furious 2nd half comeback that saw them get behind as many as 12. Credit to them for fighting hard to get as close as 3 points from tying it up. But just too little, too late.

The all around defensive lapses and the front court players like Magoon Gwath and Miles Heide getting into foul trouble were both tough to watch on the players account and the officiating account. But it’s a sobering reminder this team is a young one.

“The journey is going to be the journey.” says coach Dutcher. “We got 3 freshman and 3 sophomores in the top-10 and sometimes they play like freshman and sophomores. They don’t play like juniors and seniors, so we’ve got to get better performances by more players to get a win and tonight we didn’t do that.“

The inconsistency has been the consistency this season. With this group it’s something we can only hope clicks one day before the conference tournament if we are lucky along this journey.

The Remedy is Free

So what will it take to bring about that consistency, especially on offense? A good starting point are free throws. As rudimentary as it sounds free throws have been a massive detractor for this team and we’re not just talking about makes & misses. But let’s start there.

Only Air Force and Fresno State have a worse free throw shooting percentage than the Aztecs’ 67%. The next two above that are Wyoming and Nevada. Not exactly the cream of the crop in the Mountain West.

Now let’s focus in on just getting to the line. The Aztecs are dead last in free throw attempts at just 278 on the season. Colorado State is next up on the list with 283, but interestingly enough the Rams are #1 in making them.

So for the Aztecs if you take being disastrously low in getting to the line and combine that with their near the bottom amount of attempts, you’re left with so many potential points left out on the court that should be lit up on the scoreboard.

“The beauty of college basketball is these young guys—they’re resilient.” Dutcher explained. “They don’t like losing, but they won’t sit there and obsess about it like coaches do.”

More like coaches and fans alike.

Hopefully the guys can obsess about it just a little bit more to practice free throws. It could be the big difference between being in the dance or on the outside of the bubble looking in.