The San Diego State men’s basketball team heads to the Mountain West Championship for its quarterfinal game this Thursday at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.
The Aztecs are the outright 2022-2023 Mountain West regular-season champion and are going into the Mountain West tournament as the No. 1 seed.
On Tuesday, head coach Brian Dutcher said, “This is the best time of the year if you’re a basketball player, a basketball coach or a basketball fan.”
The team is grateful that SDSU fans make the trip to Las Vegas.
“Our Aztec fans are loyal. They’re passionate,” Dutcher said. “That’s always the best part, having our Aztec fans follow us. It gives us comfort on a road floor, making it feel like a home game.”
Thursday’s game will be at noon against the winner of Wednesday’s game between No. 8 Colorado State and No. 9 Fresno State.
“We’ll spend time in practice over the next two or three days getting ready for both of them, which is an interesting thing to do,” Dutcher said.
While the Mountain West Championship is the next challenge, after that comes the NCAA tournament, and the Aztecs are confident.
“We’re the deepest we’ve ever been. We go nine deep and we’re healthy, which is a rarity in college sports,” Dutcher said. “So, we’re healthy and we’re deep and that should make for positive results in March and that’s what we’re hoping.”
Aztecs junior guard Lamont Butler just earned All-Mountain West honors for the first time in his Aztec career.
“Our depth is one of our biggest attributes. I can play hard for five, 10 minutes and then I know the next guy is going to come in and do the same,” Butler said.
Butler said his team trusts each other.
“We know that the next guy is going to pick up on our mistakes and we feel like we have a really good team this year," he said. "Everybody does their part. Everybody does their job and it’s really good for us.”
Butler hopes to come back to San Diego as the Mountain West men’s basketball champs.
