For those unfamiliar with San Diego State basketball, that 68-50 win over Northern Colorado in the NCAA Tournament Thursday was vintage for this season. Close and kind of ugly offensively for a half, a rout in the second half while the opponent struggles to reach 50.
The formula is not pretty, but it has been effective for many of SDSU's 33 wins so far this season. While the first half shooting performance had many fans gnashing their teeth -- I was yelling some pretty ugly things at my television -- we've seen it before and the Aztecs have mostly survived.
The question is whether they thrive the next time out. Here's a look at the history this season of what happened the next game out after a sub-par shooting performance.
On Dec. 13, the Aztecs survived an 0-for-18 performance from behind the three-point arc, and 34 percent overall shooting game to down Cal Poly 51-45. The next game, they scorched the nets to the tune of 8-for-13 on threes in the first half in a 90-64 rout of UC Santa Barbara.
On Dec. 22, they held off IUPUI for the second time and made just 3-of-20 threes. The next game out they scored 93 vs Occidental on New Year's Eve.
It goes on. They opened the Mountain West Conference season clanging threes but shooting well overall at TCU and did a bit better at Utah. They followed the ugly boxing match vs UNLV by making most of their bombs at New Mexico, including seven by DJ Gay.
Past performance does not guarantee future success, but the trend looks good. I also feel much better about Saturday's match-up with Temple than I did before seeing them hang on against Penn State. We all knew that one bad shooting game at the wrong time could abort a deep tournament run. Let's just hope they got that one out of their system.
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