Aztecs head to Air Force with hopes of improving shot selection – elcajon newson Elcajon News only

Last week, they tried an audible approach — piping loud crowd noise into Viejas Arena during practice so that players couldn’t hear the play calls at the far end of the floor away from the bench and had to rely on hand signals.

Didn’t work. San Diego State had a dreadful first half against UNLV, making just 3 of 16 behind the 3-point line and managing a mere 23 points en route to a 76-68 home loss that damaged their computer metrics and, by extension, their NCAA Tournament resume.

This week, ahead of a Wednesday game at Air Force (7 p.m. PST, CBS Sports Network), the Aztecs’ coaches tried a visual approach.

Hanging in the JAM Center film room are four poster-sized photos of egregiously deep 3s hoisted in the early minutes against UNLV, when nine of their first 10 shots were beyond the arc and several were “logo” 3s waaaaay beyond it. (They made one.)

“Sometimes with the shot clock running down – 3, 2, 1 … – you have to take a deep one,” coach Brian Dutcher said. “But the deep ones early in the shot clock were, like, come on, we’re got to get better shots than that. That’s just teaching the team, visually seeing it, instead of only showing it on tape.

“It’s up there for two or three days, a little visual reminder.”

The photos were greeted with laughter from the players, and acknowledgement. Point taken — no pun intended.

“It was funny, but it was informative,” senior Jared Coleman-Jones said. “With a visual like that, you kind of understand where they’re coming from.”

It also helps that they’re playing Air Force, which is 3-15 overall and 0-7 in the Mountain West. One of those losses was 67-38 at Viejas Arena two weeks after being held to two baskets and 14 points in the second half.

The Falcons are 297th in the NCAA’s NET metric and 298th in Kenpom, making this a can’t-lose proposition for an Aztecs team that suffered its first Quad 3 loss in five seasons Saturday and slipped to a No. 10 seed (and the last team outside the First Four play-in games) in the latest projected NCAA Tournament field by ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi. Wednesday is the first of two road games at elevation this week, followed by Saturday at Nevada.

“We’re not the only team that lost a home game last weekend,” Dutcher said, and indeed 19 of the Associated Press top 25 went down last week. “There’s a lot of parity. The unfortunate thing is, being in the Mountain West, we’re not a power conference. We get fewer mistakes than a power conference.

“Those guys, they just wash off a loss: ‘Well, the team we lost to is great,’ and this and that. The Mountain West has less room for error. We’ll see what it is at the end of the day, but having been in this league for as long as I have, I just know it’s unforgiving. That’s what makes losing any game in our conference stressful for everybody. … It’s grind time.”

The sixth-place Aztecs (11-5, 4-3) currently rank 128th in Kenpom offensive efficiency and ninth in defense. In a way, they’re related.

The unspoken deal Dutcher has with his players is that if they expend the effort and energy to play elite defense, he’ll reciprocate with offensive freedom and not nitpicking shot selection. That, however, can lead to the opening moments of the UNLV game, when players, frustrated that open shots weren’t falling, began launching them farther and farther out, earlier and earlier in the shot clock.

“The message they’re trying to get across,” Coleman-Jones said, “is the reason they don’t put a collar on us on offense is because they expect us to be intuitive, smart, intelligent basketball players. They expect us to know what plays to make, know when to pass up a good shot to get a great shot, know when to take your shot.

“That’s part of our growth and what is special about this program. They teach us how to be basketball players first.”

Dutcher admits it’s a slippery slope, encouraging discretion without squelching confidence or creativity.

“I’ve seen it a million times,” he said. “You miss 3s and pretty soon it’s like, ‘Don’t shoot any more 3s.’ Well, that’s unrealistic. You can micromanage it and overcompensate, and then you’re not looking to take open ones.

“The 3-point shot is the most dangerous weapon in the game. But you can’t shoot them as deep as we were.”