3 thoughts: SDSU 73, Idaho State 57 … No. 200 for Dutch, screens and fouls

Three thoughts on San Diego State’s 73-57 win against Idaho State on Sunday afternoon at Viejas Arena:

1. No. 200

Brian Dutcher won his 200th career game as head coach, which is a modest milestone for many but wildly impressive when you consider where he did it and how quickly he did it.

It came two games into his ninth season, meaning he just missed equaling Mark Few (Gonzaga), Roy Williams (North Carolina) and Jamie Dixon (Pitt), who all did it in eight. Dutcher likely would have hit No. 200 in eight as well had parts of two seasons not been abbreviated by the pandemic.

It also came in just 268 games, which puts him 25th on the all-time Division I list of quickest to 200 victories – two behind Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim and one ahead of UTEP legend Don Haskins and USC’s Eric Musselman. SDSU predecessor Steve Fisher needed 311 games and parts of 11 seasons to get to 200, although that includes some lean years while building the Aztecs program from scratch.

Reese Dixon-Waters and Pharoah Compton were asked about the milestone and the man behind it.

“Today, we were supposed to be out on the court at a certain time and I was late,” said Dixon-Waters, who was still getting his ankles taped. “He got on me about that, and I respected that because a lot of places people would let it go or let you get away with it. He got on me about it.

“I wasn’t late purposely. I was backed up on my pre-game routine. But I do respect him a lot and I appreciate it because he’s always honest. His door is always open, so whenever we want to talk to him, we can. And he’s a great coach. I’m happy I could help get him his 200th win.”

Added Compton, who also was getting taped late: “He got on me as well, just being late. He’s being as real as he can. I love him for that. I wish for him to keep doing that, and keep winning.”

The Dutcher family now has 517 career Division I victories, counting the 317 by his father, Jim, at Eastern Michigan and Minnesota.

“I’m happy (Steve) Fisher retired,” Dutcher said, “because I think he could still coach and he’d have 200 more. He’d have about 1,000 by now. But I’m glad he handed the reins over to me. I learned from him when he was a head coach that you surround yourself with really good people, assistant coaches and players, everybody embraces a role, including mine, and great things can happen for all of us.”

2. Pick and pop

Dutcher spoke afterwards about how this was a perfect nonconference game because “we got exposed on some things, which is what I wanted to have happen as a coach as long as it didn’t cost me a game. And it didn’t.”

At the top of the list is defending the 1-4 ball screen, or point guard and 4-man.

Idaho State’s leading scorer is Connor Hollenbeck, a 6-foot-7 power forward who shot 40% behind the arc last season. The Bengals like him to set a high ball screen for the point guard, then fade to the wing for an open 3 instead of rolling hard to the basket – the quintessential pick-and-pop 4, in basketball-speak.

In the first half, Hollenbeck was slipping the ball screen, meaning he faked like he would set it and darted prematurely to the wing. The Aztecs didn’t fall for it and stayed with their man, the point guard on the point guard, the forward on Hollenbeck.

The halftime adjustment from Bengals coach Randy Looney was for Hollenbeck to actually set the ball screen and force the defensive forward to prevent the point guard from turning the corner into the lane. The counter for the Aztecs is to merely switch the screen, meaning the forward stays on the point guard and yells “Switch”, instructing the defensive point guard to cover Hollenbeck wherever he goes.

Except that didn’t happen, and Hollenbeck drained three open 3s in the second half that helped trim a 22-point deficit to 12.

“We’ve had this issue in the past,” Dutcher explained. “Sometimes our guards are so physical, they don’t understand that we’re not switching to prevent their guy from scoring; we’re switching to prevent the 4-man from popping and scoring. If our 4-man has to help on the ball screen, then no one has him when he fades to the corner.

“So we wanted to switch that, and we made a lot of mistakes on it. And they knew it. It’s something we have to work on. We’re capable of doing it. It’s something we’ve always been good at, switching ball screens. But we’ve been so good at (defending them other ways) and making it hard on the other team that we haven’t done it a lot, so it was good to get exposed a little bit today.”

3. Telephone poles

Most people’s wingspan is more or less equivalent to height, maybe an inch longer.

Sophomore post Pharaoh Compton is 6-foot-7. His wingspan is reportedly 7-3, or eight inches more.

Translation: He has really, really, really long arms.

That allows him to play significantly taller in a more agile body. It also has made him more foul-prone, since the temptation is to reach with those telephone poles to poke away the ball. The result was 7.3 fouls per 40 minutes last season, which ranked 23rd out of 5,000-odd players nationally. The next highest by an SDSU rotation player was 4.8.

Compton worked hard in the offseason to reconfigure his body, hoping that better fitness would lead to less mental fatigue on the floor and fewer lazy fouls, and to focus on playing more vertically than horizontally with his arms.

That worked well in the opener against Long Beach State: He had zero fouls in 16 minutes.

That didn’t work so well Sunday: five fouls in a mere 11 minutes.

What made it more frustrating is what he did in those 11 minutes: 14 points on 7-of-7 shooting, making him just the second player in Dutcher’s nine seasons as head coach to be perfect from the floor with at least seven attempts; the other was Magoon Gwath last season at Nevada.

Two of his fouls were iffy calls by an officiating crew that, despite nearly 50 seasons of combined experience, had never worked a game in Viejas Arena and only once had ever seen the Aztecs and their physical, athletic, frenetic style of defense. But two were clear reaches, and the fifth foul was a taunting technical, which in college counts as a personal foul.

Asked why he keeps getting whistles, Compton cracked: “I’m not the ref.”

Asked what he needs to do to stay out of foul trouble so he can stay on the floor, he said: “That’s a good question. I would say, just trusting my length, knowing that if I’m guarding straight up a lot of people can’t score on me. I’m playing pretty hard and I’m touching my opponent a lot. That’s how we play. We play pretty aggressive, … but I have to play as hard as I can without fouling at the end of the day.”

Points per 40 minutes through two games: 29.6, while shooting an incomprehensible 90%.isH

Fouls per 40 minutes: 7.4.