SAN DIEGO – Looking to get back to the formula which brought five straight victories to open the 2020-21 campaign, the San Diego State men's basketball team travels to San Luis Obispo, Calif., to face the Saint Mary's Gaels in a neutral site game on Tuesday evening. The game, in Mott Athletics Center on the campus of Cal Poly, will be broadcast on CBS Sports Network and tipoff is scheduled for 6 p.m. PT.
SCENE SETTER
-San Diego State's wickedly challenging non-conference schedule would appear to come to an end on Tuesday night in a matchup of two of the best programs on the West Coast as the Aztecs face Saint Mary's in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
-This marks the first meeting between the teams in more than a decade. The last encounter came on Dec. 1, 2010, a 69-55 Aztec victory at Viejas Arena. Chase Tapley had 14 points and Malcolm Thomas added 12 points for the Aztecs. Kawhi Leonard, a freshman on that team, had six points and a game-high eight rebounds.
-Since the start of the 2010-11 campaign, Saint Mary's (268-82, 76.6 percent) has the eighth highest and San Diego State (266-87, 75.4 percent) has the 11th highest winning percentages nationally. Gonzaga, which ranks first on the list, is the only other team ahead of the Gaels and Aztecs on the chart that resides in either the Mountain or Pacific time zones.
-Win streaks on the line Tuesday night: 13-game road win streak (longest active streak n the nation), 10-game win streak against teams from the state of California, 5-game win streak in Tuesday games, a 3-game road streak against teams from the West Coast Conference.
-San Diego State has gone 5-1 this season against top-notch competition. The Aztecs are one of only seven teams nationally with multiple victories over AP Top 25 teams and the combined record of its five Division I opponents is 22-11 (minus their 1-5 collective record against SDSU).
-San Diego State owns a 35-3 record since the start of the 2019-20 campaign. That is second in the country (Gonzaga is 35-2).
-San Diego State is coming off of a rare loss. Even more rare is the Aztecs dropping consecutive games. San Diego State has gone 42 consecutive games without losing back-to-back games. That is the fourth longest active streak nationally.
-San Diego State saw its national-best 17-game non-conference win streak come to end Friday afternoon in a 72-62 loss to Brigham Young. The Aztecs trailed by as many as 17 points in the second half and ESPN models gave the Aztecs less than a 1.8 percent chance of winning. Nonetheless, San Diego State used a 14-0 run to tie the game with under two minute to play.
-The Aztecs suffered through their worst shooting game of the season, connecting on only 36.8 percent from the field.
-Despite the loss, Matt Mitchell produced one of the great games in recent SDSU memory. The senior forward scored 35 points (including 26 after intermission), on 12-of-17 field goal attempts and 5-of-9 from three point range. He scored 56.5 percent of SDSU's 62 points on Friday. That is the only time in the last 25 years that a San Diego State player has scored 35 or more points, connected on at least 66.7 percent of his field goal attempts and made five three-point field goals in a game. The only other time an Aztec player scored at least 35 points and made 2/3 of his FGA in that span was Brandon Heath vs. UNLV on Jan. 15, 2005 (37 points, 12-of-18 FGs).
-After a two-week run in the Associated Press Top 25 Poll, the Aztecs fell just out of the poll this week and currently reside at No. 26.
-SDSU's turnover margin of +5.7 is tied for 10th nationally among teams that have played at least five times and 26th nationally overall.
-San Diego State is again one of the elite defensive teams in the nation. The Aztecs are holding the opposition to 59.5 points per game (20th nationally), 39.0 percent field goal shooting and are forcing 17.2 turnovers per game. Kenpom has SDSU's defensive efficiency as the 26th best in the country.
-SDSU-
Aztecs Set For Neutral Site Game vs. Saint Mary’s
