FRESNO – Three thoughts on No. 24 San Diego State’s 84-62 win at Fresno State on Wednesday in its Mountain West opener:

1. A special player

Fresno State coach Vance Walberg looked at the film and looked at the stats, and came to a Captain Obvious conclusion that the Aztecs’ guards were carrying them.

Through six games, the frontline was contributing less than 30% of SDSU’s offensive output while shooting 50% from the line and averaging more turnovers than assists. The four leading scorers were all guards.

“We decided,” Walberg said, “they have such great guards that we wanted to make them beat us with the bigs. And they did. They kicked our ass.”

Well, one guy did. Jared Coleman-Jones was 1 of 7. Pharaoh Compton got in foul trouble. Miles Heide didn’t score.

But Magoon Gwath … big problem.

The plan was to use his defender to clog the paint and deter drives by the Aztecs’ guards. And that had moderate success, with Nick Boyd, BJ Davis and Miles Byrd finishing 12 points under their combined scoring average.

But then the guy they call “Goon” realized what was happening and positioned himself in the right corner in a one-point game with five minutes remaining in the first half. Catch. Shoot. Good.

“Seeing that one go in, he got a really good contest,” Gwath said of his defender’s closeout. “But it felt good coming off my hands, so I thought, ‘Oh, I might have a night.’”

It unwittingly untracked the 7-foot redshirt freshman who had struggled to score in every game except Division III Occidental, averaging 3.2 points and shooting 26.3% against Div. I competition.

“I was just thinking, at some point the ball has to go through the net,” said Gwath, who sat out last season after ankle surgery. “I’ve got to have one good game, sometime. Tonight was the night.”

He would make two more 3s before halftime. In the second half, he went to work inside, dunking on the back end of SDSU’s press break as the Bulldogs extended their defense. Or grabbing offensive rebounds and, without bringing the ball down, making the easy put-back.

“Everyone is trying to game plan against us, trying to figure out what we’re strong at and what we’re not good at,” coach Brian Dutcher said. “They took a chance of not guarding Magoon early in the game, using his man as a help defender, and he made them pay with three 3s.

“Pretty darn good for a freshman, a double-double.”

And not just any double-double but 25 points and 10 rebounds. The last SDSU freshman with at least 20 points and 10 boards was Kawhi Leonard in 2009 in his ninth career game. Gwath did it in his seventh.

He entered the night leading the nation at 4.0 blocks per game. The stat sheet said he had two Wednesday, but that could – and should – change shortly. SDSU staffers are rewatching the game to see if Gwath was shorted a couple blocks, as it seems he was.

And that’s not counting the multiple other shots he altered, or simply deterred.

Consider Walberg sold.

“He’s a special player,” said the 68-year-old coach, who’s seen a few in a career that included four years as an NBA assistant. “He’s a very unique talent, there’s no doubt about it.”

2. A play-hard kid

With 19.6 seconds left in a 22-point game, with the walk-ons in, with fans filing out of the Save Mart Center, with both benches standing in anticipation of the handshake line, Davis did something that defines him as a player and SDSU as a program.

He turned it over, and the Bulldogs raced to the other end in pursuit of a stat-padding, garbage-time basket.

And Davis, in a moment where apathy would have been understood, raced behind Jasir Tremble to swat it.

Didn’t have to in the context of the game. Had to in the context of Aztecs basketball.

“Always got to have effort, no matter what time of the game it is,” Davis said. “Man, turned it over. If anybody had turned it over, I would have sprinted back and tried to make a play. Just trying to be effective where I can. If that’s chasing somebody down in transition, then so be it.

“Coach preaches that to us. We all have big dreams, and that effort is going to get us there.”

Dutcher smiled.

“BJ is a play-hard kid,” he said. “That’s an example of playing to our standard. Don’t give up on a play. If you make a mistake, make up for it at the other end. That’s just BJ doing what we expect of all our players, which is to play to our standard – not to the opponent, not to the score.”

3. End of an era

A remarkable streak is about to end. For the first time in 19 seasons, Justin Huston will not coach for or against the SDSU men’s basketball team.

That’s because Hutson was hired as an assistant coach and scouting specialist by his wife, Stacie Terry-Hutson, the SDSU women’s head coach.

It looked like Hutson might keep the streak alive Saturday night, when USD comes to Viejas Arena. After Fresno State declined to renew his contract as head coach last spring, Hutson returned to San Diego and, while waiting to see if an opportunity materialized in his wife’s program, served as a volunteer coach (and de facto defensive coordinator) with the Toreros under Steve Lavin.

But that arrangement, along with his prodigious streak, ended this week when Hutson’s hiring was announced by SDSU.

Hutson first came to SDSU as a men’s assistant in 2006 and spent five years on Steve Fisher’s staff. Then he went to UNLV as associate head coach under Dave Rice for two seasons, then back to SDSU for five more before Fresno State hired him for the last six. Since UNLV and Fresno State are both in the Mountain West, he had either coached for or against the Aztecs in each of the past 18 seasons.

His salary with the women’s program – $66,084, according to an SDSU official – is considerably less than the $550,000 per year he made at Fresno State, and a coach with his pedigree certainly could have landed a power conference assistant job that paid well into six figures.

But you can’t put a price on living with your spouse. And remaining in the California State University system, no matter how modest the salary, moves Hutson closer to a lucrative pension, which is based on years of service (he’s closing in on 20) and a percentage of your highest wages.

“I spent the last six years living apart from my wife,” Hutson, who met Terry in his second stint at SDSU, said in October. “It’s time for us to be in the same city.”