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Las Vegas • The season ended Thursday for the basketball team that just couldn't finish.
Utah State's effort against No. 1 seed San Diego State in the Mountain West tournament quarterfinals was not surprising.
"We got exactly what we thought we were to get," said SDSU coach Steve Fisher.
The same could be said of the outcome, a 71-65 victory for SDSU. The score is deceiving, because a bizarre sequence of events enabled the Aztecs to make five free throws in the last 3.8 seconds.
After everything that happened Thursday, with all kinds of plays that have gone USU's way, the harsh reality is the Aggies missed their last eight shots from the field. As of Jalen Moore's 3-pointer that was good for a 58-54 lead with 6:54 remaining, USU had made exactly half of its attempts. And then the No. 9-seeded Aggies made nothing, except for seven free throws. Even those makes were offset by some critical misses — preceding Shane Rector's two free throws that pulled USU within 66-65 with 3.8 seconds left.
The irony of USU's finally converting a scoring opportunity is I'm convinced Rector should have been told to miss the last shot, giving the Aggies a chance to grab a rebound and force overtime. That's the only way the math would have worked, barring a turnover. Instead, "We just tried to keep the extending the game," said USU coach Tim Duryea.
That strategy failed, and so did much of what the Aggies (16-15) tried to do offensively with the game on the line.
Undoubtedly, USU deserves credit for putting up a "really good, really tremendous" fight, by Duryea's description. San Diego State is far and away the Mountain West's best team, and the Aggies stuck with them for 40 minutes. This game was absolutely nothing like the teams' 2014 quarterfinal meeting, a 73-39 win for SDSU.
All afternoon, everyone kept waiting for the Aztecs' athleticism to take over the game. That didn't happen.
Yet all the Aggies ultimately succeeded in doing was leaving Las Vegas more frustrated. For anyone just tuning in, this game was a snapshot of USU's season. The Aggies repeatedly looked like they were as good as any team in the conference — even the Aztecs, in Thursday's case. But their record says otherwise.
Twitter: @tribkurt