Sprained right ankle. Bruised left thigh. Pneumonia. Now a sprained left ankle.
Trey Kell doesn’t have any breaks, but he certainly can’t catch one.
The San Diego State senior guard missed one game in his first three seasons – he was sick – and now he can’t stay healthy, the rolled left ankle just three minutes into Saturday’s game at UNLV being the latest exponent of awful luck. (He might want to stay away from the craps table.)
His team wasn’t much more fortunate, recovering from a double-digit deficit to take the lead before an absolutely offensive defensive effort condemned it to an 88-78 loss that ended an 11-game win streak against the rival Rebels (seven straight at the Thomas & Mack Center).
That drops the Aztecs (12-8) to, gulp, 4-5 at the midpoint of the Mountain West season. Suddenly, last year’s 9-9 record and No. 6 seed in the conference tournament doesn’t look so bad.
UNLV (15-6, 4-4) won for the first time in four conference games at the Mack. That, and Utah State’s upset win at Fresno State, bumped SDSU to eighth place in the 11-team conference after being picked second in the preseason media poll.
If the season ended today, they’d face ninth-place Colorado State in the play-in game, then first-place Nevada in the quarterfinals.
(We’ll pause here so you can wince.)
“I mean, we weren’t guarding,” said Jeremy Hemsley, the night’s lone bright spot, finishing with a season-high 19 points on 7 of 12 shooting after replacing Kell. “That’s what this program is built on, so I’m not sure why we’re not together on the defensive end.
“It’s just a matter of wanting to do it and not taking so many breaks. We take a lot of breaks on defense and have a lot of collapses. We just have step up. We don’t have time for excuses or to point fingers. We just have to do it.”
Coach Brian Dutcher wasn’t sugar-coating it, either. He walked into the locker room and wrote a single number on the white board: 88.
And told them: “We’re not beating anybody giving up 88 points. This is not a surprise to you. I’ve been having this talk with you for two or three weeks now ... We’ve got to find a way to get better defensively.”
Maybe he should have included another number: 58.6 percent.
That’s what UNLV shot (68.2 percent inside the 3-point arc), a number so preposterously astronomical for a program steeped in defensive tradition that no one could immediately remember the last time an opponent achieved it. Over the previous five seasons, SDSU opponents averaged under 40 percent.
Even worse, Dutcher talked after Wednesday’s 97-78 win against Colorado State how he thought his team had turned a corner in terms of defensive mindset, in terms of understanding the importance of that end of the floor amid marked offensive improvement this season.
Maybe not.
“Now we give up 88,” Dutcher said, shaking his head.
It certainly didn’t help not having Kell, a senior presence who typically covers the other team’s best perimeter player. (“People don’t understand how much we miss him on the defensive end,” Dutcher said. “He’s our defensive stopper.”)
Kell leaped for a rebound with 16:37 left in the first half, landed on a foot and suddenly was on the floor, staring at his ankle in disbelief. Really? Again? He was helped to the bench, examined by the Aztecs training staff, then helped to the locker room.
At halftime SDSU announced Kell would not return, and he spent the remainder of the game at the end of the bench with an ice pack on his ankle. Dutcher said he couldn’t put weight on it, and Kell left the arena on crutches.
That sounds worse than when he rolled his right ankle late in the loss against Washington State in Wooden Legacy final but returned for the closing minutes. He didn’t play again for 13 days. Just minutes into his return, he took a knee into his thigh fighting over a screen and sat out of the rest of that game. All told, he didn’t participate in a full, live practice for nearly four weeks.
After two lackluster performances earlier this month, doctors diagnosed him with walking pneumonia, costing him another week of practice. He received clearance to play last Wednesday against Colorado State and had his best conference game of the season: 17 points in 26 minutes.
The Aztecs trailed 9-3 when Kell went out and soon were down 19-8. But they were tied at 38 at intermission behind 10 first-half points from Hemsley and led briefly early in the second half.
The Rebels pushed the margin back into double digits thanks to a deep, contested 3-pointer by Jovan Mooring at the shot-clock buzzer, followed by an Aztec turnover when Max Montana stepped over the baseline trying to inbound, followed by a reverse layup by Shakur Juiston.
Down 11 inside six minutes to go, the Aztecs made it interesting with back-to-back-to-back 3s by Malik Pope, Devin Watson and Montana. That cut the lead to two, only for the Rebels to respond with a 6-0 run to create separation again.
The Aztecs stayed in the game by making 9 of 22 behind the arc (40.9 percent) and grabbing a season-high 18 offensive rebounds that they converted into 19 points. Pope had 14 points and eight rebounds. Freshman Matt Mitchell had 11 points and eight rebounds. Montana followed a 20-point game with 11.
But they had 16 turnovers and no answer for UNLV’s starting bigs, Cathedral Catholic High’s Brandon McCoy and JC transfer Juiston, who combined for 42 points (19 of 25 shooting) and 18 rebounds. Points in the paint: UNLV 48, SDSU 30.
The 7-foot McCoy was too tall, and the muscled Juiston was too strong for willowy freshman Jalen McDaniels (nine points, six rebounds, two turnovers).
“That’s all a valuable learning lesson for a freshman,” Dutcher said, “but it’s hard for a coach to watch … Their inside game was dominant.”
Some of that was UNLV, which entered the night ranked ninth nationally in field-goal percentage. A lot of that was SDSU.
“I like my team,” Dutcher said. “I like the makeup of it. But we have to get better defensively. I think everybody has seen that for a while. It doesn’t come as any great surprise. We’ve won a lot of games with our offense, but our defense has to get better.”
Notable
Next up: The Aztecs have their second and final bye Wednesday, returning to the floor on Saturday at Viejas Arena against Air Force. The game originally was scheduled at 5 p.m., but has been moved to 7 p.m. and will be streamed on ESPN3 … Hemsley became the 32nd member of SDSU’s 1,000-point club with a layup early in the second half … Kell and Pope lost to UNLV for the first time. They’re now 8-1 in their careers against the Rebels … After a season-high 25 assists against Colorado State on Wednesday, the Aztecs had just 12 … SDSU is shooting 42.3 percent (22 of 52) behind the arc in the last two games … Mooring made a 3 after 2:09 to extend UNLV’s streak of consecutive games with at least one to 1,027. Only Kentucky (1,034 games) has gone longer.