Schakel's Career Night Leads Aztecs to 13-Point Win

SAN DIEGO - Jordan Schakel hit 8-of-11 3-pointers and scored a career-high 28 points as San Diego State rolled past Colorado State 78-65 on Monday night.

The Aztecs have now gone 45 consecutive games without suffering consecutive losses. That is the fourth-longest active streak in the nation.

In addition, San Diego State snaps a two-game homecourt losing streak and now has gone 249 consecutive home games without suffering a three-game
homecourt losing streak (dating back to Feb. 12, 26 and 28, 2005).

"Good bounce back victory for us today," Aztec coach Brian Dutcher said. "You know, we felt that we had an opportunity to win the first game in the series. They made the plays down the stretch; we didn't. Today, we got off to another fantastic start. We maintained the lead at halftime. In the second half, they made a run. They're a good team. But we kept our wits about us. We continued to play hard and got a good victory, our first conference win in the season. And now I told them the same thing I did after we lost our first game, we have a quick turnaround. We have to have an NBA mentality. Enjoy this for tonight, but we have to go to work tomorrow because we play on Thursday."

In this one the Rams trailed by 29, 42-13, late in the first half and had a 14-0 run early in the second half but never got closer than 14 points until scoring the final basket of the game.

Terrell Gomez had 13 points for San Diego State (7-2, 1-1 Mountain West Conference). Matt Mitchell added 12 points. Nathan Mensah had 11 points.

"They are a terrific team,"Rams coach Nico Medved said. "Even though it was an emphasis, the way we handled the ball was not good. We turned it over 12 times in the first half and I think they had 22 points on live ball turnovers. So, when they are scoring out of our offense, that makes it really difficult. That
was a huge key. And overall, our defensive intensity was not what it needed to be. They got into a rhythm again and I do not think our hands were very active. They did a good job with their screening action and we did not communicate very well. They had us running around, we lost shooters and they made us pay. We came out in the second half and I think we played with a lot more force defensively and we started taking care of the ball."

David Roddy and John Tonje had 15 points for the Rams (6-2, 3-1), whose four-game win streak was broken. Isaiah Stevens had 11 points.

SDSU is 6-1 in its last seven games against Colorado State, 10-5 in its last 15 and 29-8 in last 37 contests against the Rams.

The Aztecs snapped Colorado State's four-game winning streak and keep the Rams from sweeping the season series for what would have been just the second time in the last 18 seasons. SDSU has 10 season sweeps during that span.