Three thoughts from San Diego State’s first two games at the Players Era Festival, a 71-53 win against No. 21 Creighton on Tuesday and a 78-68 loss against Oregon on Wednesday:

1. Home cooking

The Aztecs learned their opponent for Saturday’s final round — No. 6 Houston in the third-place game, 4 p.m. on TNT — at 12:04 a.m. Thursday morning. By then, most of them were asleep.

In their own beds.

The other seven teams in Las Vegas finished their games Wednesday, walked out double doors at the back of MGM Grand Garden Arena, up an escalator, down an indoor promenade of shops and restaurants, through the casino and up elevators to their hotel rooms without ever stepping outside.

The Aztecs showered, changed and went straight to the airport. The game finished at 3:15 p.m. They were back in San Diego by 8.

This was the plan all along, once SDSU realized it had a 1 p.m. tip on Wednesday and there was a 5:45 p.m. Southwest Airlines flight available. Coach Brian Dutcher regularly has his team fly home between back-to-back conference road games to get out of altitude, so why not leave Sin City with a couple days between games and have Thanksgiving dinner in San Diego?

“I’m always a believer if you can spend nights in your own bed and practice in your own facility, it’s better,” said Dutcher, whose team will return Friday night. “Staying in a hotel a whole week, that’s a long time. I’m not opposed to doing it, but the afternoon game made it possible. If we played a night game (Wednesday), it might be up for debate.”

The proximity made it possible to shave off a day on the front end of the trip as well. The other teams arrived Sunday afternoon or evening, six coming from the Central or Eastern time zone and Oregon from the Pacific Northwest. The Aztecs practiced at home Monday morning, then caught a flight in time for the event’s NIL obligations that afternoon and evening.

Seven days in Vegas is a looooong time.

Another thing: The hotel setup is the ultimate in convenience, allowing players to walk from their rooms at the MGM Grand to its connected arena. But it also means breathing dry, recycled hotel and casino air for seven days straight unless you make a special trip outside into the sunlight and fresh breeze.

Maybe it makes no difference Saturday against what annually rates as the toughest, meanest, roughest team in college basketball, an absolutely dreaded matchup. Or maybe the Cougars play like a team ready to get home and in need of some natural Vitamin D.

“I think it’s a great advantage,” Nick Boyd said, “getting a chance to go home and sleep in our own beds, really settle down and get our minds right, practice really hard in our own gym, be in our own locker room, then get back on a flight motivated and ready to go and win another big game.”

2. Go Bluejays

Dutcher and Creighton coach Greg McDermott have a long friendship and mutual respect, so they already root for one another when they’re not playing. But this season, the Aztecs are really rooting for the Bluejays.

Tuesday’s 18-point win marked the 16th straight year they have defeated a power conference program in November or December (and the Big East qualifies in basketball, with the two-time national champion and five schools that have been ranked in the Associated Press top 25 this season).

Barring an upset win against Houston on Saturday, it also could represent their only “marquee” win of the nonconference schedule and the backbone of their NCAA Tournament résumé. In other words: SDSU needs Creighton to start winning again.

The Bluejays (4-3) got starting point guard Steven Ashworth back Wednesday against No. 20 Texas A&M and led for most of the game before losing 77-73. That’s three straight, and the schedule doesn’t get much kinder.

On Saturday, they get a plucky Notre Dame team that took Rutgers to overtime and pushed Houston. Then it’s No. 1 Kansas at home. On Dec. 14, they’re at No. 9 Alabama. Four days later, they jump into the Big East schedule.

The Bluejays started the season at No. 10 in the Kenpom metric and have since tumbled to No. 49, their worst in three seasons.

It’s a good news-bad news situation from here. Good news: They have plenty of opportunities for big wins to move up, with eight games against teams ahead of them in most metrics. Bad news: They currently have no quality wins (their best is against 185 Texas-Rio Grande Valley) and will need some to avoid spiraling into oblivion and degrading their value on SDSU’s résumé.

There is, at least, a promising precedent. Two years ago, the Bluejays fell in the championship game of the Maui Invitational to trigger a six-game losing streak and were 9-8 in mid-January. They righted the ship with eight straight wins, including one against eventual national champion UConn, and reached the Elite Eight (where they lost to SDSU on a last-second free throw).

“We’ve built this program on unselfishness,” McDermott said after the SDSU loss. “Sometimes selfishness will creep in when things are tough and adversity strikes. It’s really important that we don’t enter a finger-pointing phase when we’re going through a tough time here. We stick together, we look in the mirror and try to figure out what we can do better.”

Dutcher remains optimistic.

“Greg’s a good coach,” he said. “He’ll get it solved. I’m just happy he didn’t get it solved against us.”

3. Block party

Without their usual rotation stacked with juniors, seniors and fifth-year seniors, the Aztecs have been prone to some defensive gaffs usually not seen in these parts — poor angles on closeouts, missed block-outs, late help, stuck in screens, bad footwork.

And yet, despite a 3-2 record, they still rank 11th nationally in Kenpom defensive efficiency.

The reason: rim protection.

SDSU is first in Division I — by a comfortable margin, too — in blocks per game (8.6) as well as the more nuanced stat of block percentage (25.5%), or the rate that you swat your opponent’s shot attempts. UConn is second in both categories at 7.9 and 22.5%. No one else is above 7.5 or 21.5%.

The result is opposing teams shooting 43.1% on 2-point attempts, the lowest against the Aztecs in eight years.

Last season, the Aztecs averaged 4.0 blocks (86th nationally) with a smaller lineup that had no true center and a power forward, 6-foot-9 Jaedon LeDee, not known for shot swatting (0.4 per game over his career).

The roster has been remade with considerably younger but taller, longer, bouncier pieces. Redshirt freshman Magoon Gwath leads the nation at 3.80 blocks per game, but eight other players have rejections.

“A guy like ‘Goon’ takes so much pressure off you defensively,” said Miles Byrd, who himself has eight blocks in four games. “I wouldn’t say a safety blanket, but he’s a definitely a guy where if you’re beaten by a step … you trust a 7-footer like him to go up and block a shot. This year, we’re so long and athletic that it’s going to be a sure thing where we get a lot of blocks and deflections and stuff like that.”