Folks, it happened. SDSU, the last undefeated team in college basketball, received an ‘L’ from none other than the UNLV. SDSU’s 26-game winning streak was ended at home by a team that showed up to the game 14-14. You just hate to see it.
On a massive Saturday of men’s college basketball (Baylor fell to KU and Gonzaga fell to BYU), the SDSU Aztecs probably thought they would get an easy ‘W’ at home when they hosted the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels. How wrong they, and probably most college basketball connoisseurs were. UNLV set themselves up for success with a 10-0 run in the first half, and then furthered increased their lead 14 early in the second half. Their early scoring helped UNLV stay in the game when SDSU rallied in the second half closing the gap to trail by one point with 14 seconds left in the game. Ultimately, SDSU did not rally enough and the Runnin’ Rebels left San Diego with a win. The Runnin’ Rebels’ win marks their defeat of a highest ranked opponent on the road since 1991. Amazing.
West Coast basketball stumbled a bit with both SDSU and Gonzaga dropping games they shouldn’t have. Fortunately, both teams should have opportunities to redeem themselves in the NCAA tournament. As an unbiased outsider to both teams, an observation of the day is neither team played their best and are better than these losses.
UNLV and BYU need to maintain momentum. As an unbiased outsider to both teams, BYU has the most potential to succeed in the NCAA tournament. UNLV needs to tighten up if they hope to not only make it into the tournament but to also make it past the first round. Both teams showed their potential for greatness yesterday, so hopefully they maintain that level of competition so West Coast basketball has even more representation in March.