Exhausted UNLV basketball walks into buzzsaw at San Diego State

By Mike Grimala (contact)

Monday, Jan. 24, 2022 | 9:01 p.m.

Around the second or third time San Diego State finished off a fast break with a highlight-reel dunk in the first half of Monday’s game, it became clear UNLV was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Scarlet and Gray simply ran into a buzzsaw, as an angry and vengeful (and much superior) San Diego State team took out its frustrations on the visitors in an 80-55 win that probably wasn’t as close as the final would indicate.

Two days earlier on the same court San Diego State lost a showdown with fellow Mountain West contender Boise State, scoring just 37 points in a home defeat that clearly got under the Aztecs’ skin. That result lingered, and UNLV paid the price.

San Diego State smothered UNLV on the defensive end and punished them on offensive end. And in the margins — between whistles in a game that became quite chippy and emotionally charged — the Aztecs generally imposed their will, pushing around a UNLV squad that seemed to tired and deflated to push back.

UNLV senior guard Bryce Hamilton felt it was a flat performance from the opening tip, and that is certainly not going to work against a blue-collar, hard-charging team like San Diego State.

“It hurts,” Hamilton said. “I feel like we could have competed with this team. We just didn’t come out — we didn’t start the game off with any effort.”

Kevin Kruger’s squad took the court for the fourth time in eight days and played like it early, dragging on both ends of the floor as San Diego State opened the game on a 15-5 run.

The Aztecs added another 11-0 run midway through the half — punctuated by back-to-back high-flying slam dunks by Keshad Johnson and Lamont Butler — and went into halftime with a commanding 42-23 advantage. A 17-4 burst early in the second half pushed the SDSU lead to 59-34 and pretty much closed the door on the exhausted visitors.

UNLV got run over and offered very little resistance, falling to 11-9 on the season and 3-4 in Mountain West play.

Hamilton was the lone bright spot, as he scored 23 points on 8-of-17 shooting and grabbed six rebounds. While Hamilton shouldered the offense, the rest of the team made just 11-of-43 from the field (25.6%).

Hamilton is now 1-7 in his career against San Diego State.

After the game Hamilton said he believed UNLV’s lethargy was more of a physical issue and not indicative of any lack of desire.

“I would say fatigue,” Hamilton said. “We played four games in eight days. Of course we’re not going to use that as an excuse. We’ve just got to do better. Everyone’s going through it. We’ve just got to fight through it.”

Things got edgy over the final 20 minutes. UNLV freshman Keshon Gilbert got tagged with a technical foul for pushing a San Diego State player after the whistle, and later Gilbert got into an argument with SDSU’s Chad Baker-Mazara; Baker-Mazara ended the scrap by pointing to the scoreboard. The officials hit Baker-Mazara with a technical for taunting.

Burly San Diego State guard Matt Bradley proved unstoppable, bullying his way to a game-high 27 points on 10-of-11 shooting.

The good news for UNLV is that after powering through a compressed schedule over the past week, they’ll finally have some time to regroup before traveling to face Colorado State on Friday.

Head coach Kevin Kruger was ready to move on from San Diego State game and put that time to use, hopefully recharging his squad as the schedule returns to a more normal rhythm over the final 11 games.

“There’s nothing we can do about it at this point,” Kruger said. “We’ve got a couple days here where we can get back to what we were doing that gave us a chance in pretty much every game we’ve played. That’s defensively fighting, competing, more crisp offensively. We’ve got a couple days here to get ready for Colorado State so I think we can put our time and attention toward that.”

Mike Grimala can be reached at 702-948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Mike on Twitter at twitter.com/mikegrimala.