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The script, suddenly, flips.
San Diego State’s basketball team goes from hunter to hunted, from nonconference to conference, from one of the slowest-paced teams in the nation to the second fastest, from the glitz of the Las Vegas Strip to the farmlands of the Central Valley.
“We have to embrace what we did in Vegas but get beyond it,” coach Brian Dutcher said.
Fresno State is not Houston, a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament for the previous two seasons. But on Wednesday night at the Save Mart Center (7:30 p.m., FS1) the Bulldogs present a different type of challenge for Dutcher’s young team. They’ve had a full week to prepare. They play a frenetic, unorthodox style. They press. They push. They attack. They agitate.
And the Aztecs are ranked No. 24 in The Associated Press poll following their 73-70 overtime win against then-No. 6 Houston, which is a good thing for the program’s national respect but, judging by last season, not necessarily a good thing for their immediate prospects.
The first time San Dieo State cracked the top 25 last year, it lost the following week and dropped out. The same thing happened the second time the Aztecs got ranked. And the third time. And the fourth time.
“I’ve been here three years and I know a lot of people think there’s a curse behind us being ranked,” redshirt sophomore Miles Byrd said. “You just have to come in and be locked in for our Wednesday game. … There are teams that are under us right now, probably looking up and saying, ‘This is the perfect chance to beat a ranked team.’”
“I’m interested,” Dutcher said, “to see how we respond.”
Two years ago, the Aztecs went to the Save Mart Center and won 45-43 with their lowest offensive efficiency rating in a victory in the 22-year history of the Kenpom metric, a span of 722 games.
This won’t be that.
Fresno State didn’t renew Justin Hutson’s contract last spring after six seasons and replaced him with 68-year-old Vance Walberg.
“If you know me,” Walberg said, “I love to go up and down the court.”
He’s a familiar name in the Central Valley, playing at Cal State Bakersfield then coaching 25 years at Clovis West High School and Fresno City College. But he’s equally well known in wider basketball circles, the architect of the innovative Dribble Drive Motion (DDM) offense that John Calipari adopted at Memphis in 2005 and George Karl did in two NBA stops in the 2010s.
This is Walberg’s second shot at Division I head coaching. The first, at Pepperdine in 2006, didn’t go well; he went 14-35 in two seasons and resigned.
From there, he went to UMass as an assistant, then five years as an NBA assistant with the Nuggets, 76ers and Kings, then the past eight back at Clovis West as head coach.
“This opened up last (spring),” said Walberg, who is connected to several Fresno State boosters. “I tried for it a few times before and didn’t get it. I’m blessed to get this chance.”
Walberg installed the four-out, one-in DDM that doesn’t rely on ball screens or dribble handoffs like more modern offenses but instead is predicated on spacing the floor and attacking off the dribble to stress the defense. Help off the big on the opposite block, and it’s a dump down for a dunk. Help from the perimeter, and they kick out for a 3.
“He creates space,” Dutcher said of Walberg’s offense that was all the rage 15 years ago but has since faded in popularity. “He opens up driving lanes, double gaps where there’s no help and he attacks the rim. And then they shoot the 3. They’re basically a metric team. It’s either a layup or a 3.”
Walberg marries that with a variety of presses that crank up the tempo. The Bulldogs are second in Division I at 74.1 possessions per game, behind only fellow Mountain West member New Mexico. Houston, by contrast, averages nearly nine less possessions and ranks 307th.
With little time to restock the roster (there are 11 new players), what it looks like now isn’t what it will look like in future seasons. The Bulldogs are 3-4 and have yet to beat anyone outside the 300s in the Kenpom rankings.
But it’s a conference game, on the road, coming off the high from one of the biggest regular-season victories in school history.
“I’ve just got to do a good job as one of the guys who’s played in the Mountain West on the road and remind these guys that nothing’s certain,” Byrd said. “A conference game is basically like a rivalry game. You look at rankings and say, ‘OK, SDSU should win this game.’ But, I mean, everybody has a pretty good scout on everybody and you know you’re going to be guarded well.
“Every team is going to come to play.”
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