Young and injured is generally not a recipe for success in college basketball, which makes San Diego State’s 72-67 victory at preseason No. 22 UCLA in a closed-door scrimmage Sunday afternoon all the more confounding and, if you’re an Aztecs fan, encouraging.
Brian Dutcher’s team was missing five scholarship players, including his projected starting backcourt of Nick Boyd and Reese Waters plus USD transfer Wayne McKinney. That left him with eight healthy bodies, six of whom are freshmen or sophomores.
One of those sophomores, however, was guard BJ Davis, who embraced the next-man-up opportunity by torching the Bruins for 28 points on 8 of 9 shooting overall and 6 of 7 behind the 3-point arc. He also had six rebounds, second most on the team, in 34 minutes.
Consider: Davis had 14 total points all of his freshman season in 12 games.
The good news is there’s plenty of film to learn from, starting with 24 turnovers by a program that typically averages half that. But the Aztecs compensated by shooting a sizzling 54.5 percent overall and 42.9 percent on 3s (9 of 21), plus a 35-27 advantage on the boards and 26-6 in points in the paint while holding the Bruins to 34.5 percent shooting.
UCLA led for nearly 31 minutes of the game and was still ahead by five inside eight minutes to go. SDSU responded with a 9-0 run on baskets by four different players to take a 61-57 lead.
Miles Heide, who has been battling a sore knee and was questionable to go, had a three-point play on a screen and roll with Davis for a dunk with 53 seconds left in a one-point game. Davis sealed it with his sixth 3 with 16 seconds to go.
Redshirt 7-foot freshman Magoon Gwath was the only other Aztecs player in double figures with 10 points, though he turned the ball over eight times. Miles Byrd had nine points and seven rebounds in 35 minutes, and Middle Tennessee transfer forward Jared Coleman-Jones had seven and five.
SDSU started Davis, Byrd, Gwath, Coleman-Jones and true freshman Taj DeGourville. Heide and freshman Pharaoh Compton were the bigs off the bench, and Brown transfer Kimo Ferrari was the only guard in reserve.
It is dangerous, Dutcher will be the first to tell you, to draw many conclusions from October scrimmages in an empty arena without television cameras or screaming student sections. The Aztecs have won big against ranked teams before and then struggled when the season started. They’ve also lost in scrimmages, as they did two years ago against UCLA after trailing 18-2, and reached the Final Four.
Dutcher went with an eight-man rotation out of necessity. UCLA coach Mick Cronin had the opposite problem, with nearly a full roster that he equitably divided minutes among in a series of planned substitutions. In all, 11 Bruins played and just one more than 22 minutes.
Sebastian Mack led them with 15 points in 20 minutes off the bench. Kobe Johnson added 10 points and eight rebounds.
The goal now for the Aztecs will be twofold before the Nov. 6 opener at Viejas Arena against a UC San Diego team that nearly beat them last season: Cut down the turnovers, and get healthy.
Boyd spent nearly three months in a protective boot after a summer foot injury but is expected to be cleared for full action in the coming week and play in the Oct. 30 preseason exhibition against Division II Cal State San Marcos. Waters’ foot issue is improving. McKinney is nursing a reaggravation of a hamstring injury that sidelined him for the team’s first intrasquad scrimmage (but not the second).
Also not available Sunday were junior Demarshay Johnson Jr. and 7-foot freshman Thokbor Majak.
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