SAN DIEGO — After a long break, the San Diego State Aztecs men's basketball team will be back on the court Saturday against Cal. It will have been 10 days since SDSU has played a game.
“Will we be will we be ready?” Aztecs guard BJ Davis asked. “I think we will.”
“It's been good to, not have any school or anything, and be more focused towards basketball,” Aztecs forward Pharaoh Compton added.
“I'm just trying to get a young team better,” Head Coach Brian Dutcher said. “It's a really young team. I tell them, sometimes you think you're playing hard, and I've watched it a long time, and you're not playing hard enough. Sometimes I've got to demand more of them, and sometimes coaches are really hard on their team early, and they get a lot out of them. But over the course of a season, I think it can wear a team down too.”
If you look at the rankings, the Aztecs will be favored but the rankings themselves are all over the place.
The Associated Press Poll has the Aztecs ranked #23 and the Cal Golden Bears are unranked. KenPom has Aztecs at #42, and Cal Bears at #122. The NCAA Net Ratings has the Aztecs at #56 and Cal at #108.
“The rankings, it goes like, every week or so,” Compton quipped. “Everybody likes to talk about it. I don't really like to put too much focus on it. We're more focused on March Madness and how it's going to play out."
“You know, I just show up every day and try to control what I can,” Davis added. “Which is attitude and effort. So doing that. And then, you know, I just try to see where it takes us.”
The game will be played at an event called the San Jose Tipoff, a single-day, doubleheader that will also include Oregon vs. Stanford in the other game.
Tipoff for the Aztecs will be at 7:30 p.m. Saturday night at the SAP Center in San Jose.
While the event is played on a neutral court, it is less than an hour's drive from Cal.