The San Diego State Aztecs defeated the Colorado State Rams at Moby Arena, bringing their win streak to four in Mountain West play. The Rams fall to 2-2 in Mountain West play despite coming off back-to-back wins.
Most notably Colorado State beat UNLV at Las Vegas as their first Mountain West win, good for Larry Eustachy, horrible for Dave Rice. The Colorado State Rams continue their season Gian Clavell-less, their leading scorer and most vocal team leader. Tiel Daniels and Jo De Ciman continue to give effort and both scored a good portion of Colorado State’s points on Wednesday.
The Rams and Aztecs played it tight a good chunk of the game. The Rams led the game for 18:51 versus the Aztecs lead 11:33 in the game, but the lead never went above 7 for the Rams. The score was tied for 9:36 of the entire game. The Aztecs trailed only two points (29-31) before going into the half. At the half Trey Kell led Aztec scoring with 9 points and not too far behind Jeremy Hemsley had 8.
The difference in the game was the bench scoring (21 points) and free throws (13/15, 86.7%).
San Diego State bench outscored the Colorado State bench 21 to 11 and 14 of those points went to Malik Pope, who loves to play at Moby Arena.
As San Diego Union-Tribune Aztecs beat writer, Mark Zeigler, tweets:
Malik Pope is averaging 18 points and 5.5 rebounds and shooting 73.7% in two career games at Moby Arena. Everywhere else: 4.5 ppg, 3.0 rpg.
— Mark Zeigler (@sdutzeigler) January 14, 2016
Pope subbed in a lot of minutes in favor of Zylan Cheatham who missed his only shot. Malik's fellow sophomore Trey Kell stepped it up against the Rams. The Aztec guard shot shooting a career-high 19 points with a notable five assists. And Mr. Consistent, Jeremy Hemsley contributed 14 points.
The Aztecs defense kept them in the game, creating more turnovers, steals and also keeping the Rams shooting at 40%. The Aztecs caught a break while the CSU students remain on break, especially as this game remained tight until the last 90 seconds of the game.
The Aztecs take their winning ways to Boise State to face off in what might be a preview of the Mountain West Championship game in early March. These two teams struggled in conference play but are now finding their stroke and take their undefeated conference record to the test.