LAS VEGAS — Brian Dutcher’s young team just grew up.
San Diego State, with five new starters and a rotation with three freshmen, shocked No. 6 Houston in the third-place game of the Players Era Festival on Saturday, coming from 11 down in the second half to force overtime and win — yes, win — 73-70 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
The Aztecs trailed for more than 30 minutes, finally regaining the lead in OT, then went up five and hung on for dear life against what Alabama coach Nate Oats called “the toughest, hardest-playing team in America.”
It came down to this: Magoon Gwath made one of two free throws for a three-point lead, and Houston called timeout with 7.7 seconds left.
The Cougars worked the ball to leading scorer LJ Cryer, who dribbled against Nick Boyd at the top of the key and fired a step-back 3 from 24 feet.
Rim.
Buzzer.
The win made the MESA Foundation, SDSU basketball’s NIL collective, $150,000 richer for the third-place finish in the inaugural eight-team event. That’s in addition to the $1 million each program’s collective received just for showing up.
Houston got an extra $100,000 for finishing third. The championship game between No. 9 Alabama and Oregon was worth $500,000 to the winner and $250,000 to the loser.
The hard part wasn’t defending Houston’s final shot. It was getting there.
The Aztecs (4-2) overcame an 11-point deficit in the second half to pull within a point several times down the stretch but never could quite climb over that final hump.
They were still down two with the ball with 19.7 seconds left and called timeout. Dutcher diagrammed a plan to get BJ Davis a 3 in the corner, which he got and missed as a defender crashed into him.
No whistle.
But Miles Byrd (18 points) grabbed the offensive board, was fouled and made both free throws to tie with 13.4 seconds to go.
Houston’s Emanuel Sharp took the final shot of regulation, a fall-away from the right baseline over Byrd that bounced off the back rim. Overtime.
The Aztecs got breakout performances from its front line, quiet through the first four Division I games before Jared Coleman-Jones (16 points) and freshman Pharaoh Compton (13) found their offensive rhythm.
The problem was that leading scorers BJ Davis and Nick Boyd, who entered the game averaging a combined 28.8 points, were both scoreless for the game’s first 31 minutes.
Boyd finally grabbed a rebound tipped to midcourt and raced in for an easy layup to break the ice with nine minutes to go. He followed that with a pair of 3-pointers, then Davis got his first points with a 3 as the Aztecs pulled within a point at 56-55.
Boyd finished with 12 points, all in the final nine minutes of regulation and five of overtime.
Four-plus minutes into the game, the score was 6-0. No surprise there with two top 10 defensives doing battle.
The surprising part: SDSU had the seven.
Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson finally blinked and called timeout after seven minutes and four turnovers. That was followed by a miss, an airball and another turnover when two Aztecs took a page out of Houston’s playbook and dove headlong for a loose ball.
But the Cougars figured out that they didn’t need to make shots if they could get to the free-throw line and went on a 13-0 run, the first seven of which were free throws by Emanuel Sharp.
The 6-foot-3 redshirt junior nicknamed “Crash” drew two particularly controversial fouls.
One came with 7:53 left in the first half and, replays showed, Boyd set for what appeared to be a clear charge. That was Boyd’s second foul and sent him to the bench for the remainder of the half. The other was on Byrd with 0.7 seconds left in the half with incidental contact, and after he picked up his pivot foot for what should have been traveling.
Houston led by five at intermission, the difference coming at the line. The Aztecs were 6 of 11 compared to a perfect 11 of 11 by the Cougars.