Jan. 3, 2011
SAN DIEGO -
No. 6 San Diego State at TCU Game Notes | SDSU Broadcast Flip Card
San Diego State Opens Mountain West Conference Play with A Pair of Road Games; 6th-Ranked Aztecs Face TCU on Wednesday in League Lidlifter
No. 6 San Diego State (15-0 overall; 0-0 MWC) opens its 12th season of basketball as one of the founding members of the Mountain West Conference with a stiff road test at TCU (9-6 overall; 0-0 MWC) on Wednesday at Daniel-Meyer Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas.
The game is scheduled for a 6:30 p.m. CT (4:30 p.m. PT) start and the contest will be shown live on The Mtn. The game can also be heard on radio in Southern California on AM 600 KOGO.
San Diego State, one of seven remaining undefeated teams in the country, became the first team in the nation to reach 15-0 on New Year's Eve day, with a 93-50 victory over Occidental. The Aztecs led wire-to-wire, and despite playing without senior forward Billy White (sprained right ankle), SDSU cruised to a 43-point win, matching the 10th-largest margin of victory in school history.
Sophomore guards Chase Tapley and James Rahon paced the Aztecs with 15 points a piece as four San Diego State players scored 14 or more points in the contest. After leading 42-24 at intermission, head coach Steve Fisher challenged the team to be more efficient on offense and more careful protecting the basketball. The result was a 21-of-24 (87.5 percent) shooting performance in the second half and four turnovers. Two of the three misses after intermission came from three-point range. SDSU enjoyed a 42-13 rebound edge in the game.
San Diego State carries a number of school-record streaks into the game against TCU, including a 15-game overall winning streak, a 24-game winning streak against unranked teams and an eight-game road/neutral streak.
TCU enters the contest with a 9-6 record, having already posted victories over automatic BCS conference foes USC and Texas Tech. The Horned Frogs are 7-1 at home this season, with the seven victories coming by an average margin of 19.0 points.
This is the 14th meeting between San Diego State and TCU, with the Aztecs owning a 9-4 series advantage. The Aztecs have won four straight and nine of the 10 encounters since the Horned Frogs joined the Mountain West Conference in 2005. Two of the last three games between the teams have been decided by seven points or less.
This is the first of two road games for San Diego State to open the 2011 conference slate (SDSU also opens with three of their first four games on the road). The Aztecs travel to Salt Lake City to face Utah on Saturday. Game time for that contest is 2 p.m. MT (1 p.m. PT) and the game will be televised by Versus. This marks the first time San Diego State opens the conference season with consecutive road games since the 2004-05 campaign, when the Aztecs opened MWC play with road wins at Brigham Young and at UNLV.