FRESNOFRESNO — Three thoughts on No. 19 San Diego State’s 73-41 win at Fresno State on Saturday night:
1. A world without rules
The only entity that took a worse beating than Fresno State last week was the NCAA. The Bulldogs lost big on the court, and the NCAA lost big in court.
The latest legal setback for college sports’ governing body came in Greeneville, Tenn., where a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction barring the NCAA from enforcing some of its key NIL rules — specifically those preventing players from negotiating monetary compensation before formally committing to a school.
The legal complaint was filed by attorneys general in Tennessee and Virginia amid revelations that the NCAA was investigating the University of Tennessee for potential violations of its NIL policies. Instead of fighting the allegations through the NCAA’s adjudication process, they simply went to federal court, where the NCAA regularly loses.
So now there are no rules?
“I’m not sure there were rules anyway, to be honest with you, at least rules that people in college basketball don’t try to exploit,” SDSU coach Brian Dutcher said. “There were rules that people were trying to go around anyway. There are rules that everyone thinks people follow, and there’s the reality of what it is. And this is probably closer to the reality of what we’ve been dealing with.
“It’s college basketball, it’s college athletics, it’s a new world.”
In that new world, representatives of other programs can basically approach his players right now and offer them money to transfer without fear of repercussion.
Another federal court injunction, from December, barred the NCAA from enforcing policies related to two-time transfers having to sit out one season, creating de facto free agency by opening the transfer portal to everybody. That the portal doesn’t officially open until March 18, the day after Selection Sunday, is no deterrent.
Dutcher shrugged.
“It’s happening anyway behind the scenes,” he said. “There’s nobody in the portal, but everyone knows who’s going in the portal. There are no secrets. People are out there shopping kids to see if there’s more interest in other programs. That’s the reality of basketball right now.
“I don’t invent the rules. I don’t have a say in any of the rules that are put in place. But if I’m going to keep San Diego State relevant, I have to find a way to be good at NIL for our future.”
2. A classy end
Justin Hutson knows what’s coming. Everyone does.
The former Aztecs assistant coach and husband of SDSU women’s head coach Stacie Terry is in the sixth and final year of his contract at Fresno State. It won’t be renewed.
He twice had 23-win seasons, but the other four have been 11-19, 12-12, 11-20 and now 11-16.
It’s been a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy for Fresno State, which many consider the most under-resourced basketball program in the Mountain West and which has done little to help Hutson overcome those deficiencies. The administration was too cheap to buy out the final year of his contract last spring and too unsavvy to give him an “extension” with no buyout, as many programs do to artificially help lame-duck coaches attract recruits.
Then he took ill last month and missed two games. Then three starters got hurt, including both bigs, and a key rotation piece flew to the Dominican Republic for a funeral. Saturday night, they were down to eight scholarship players and the starting lineup looked like this: guard, guard, guard, guard, guard.
The Bulldogs are in ninth place in the Mountain West at 4-10. They have lost their last two by a combined 56 points. The 41 points Saturday were their fewest in a Mountain West game in history.
But give Hutson, who was part of two Sweet 16 teams at SDSU and helped develop the program’s defensive identity, this much: He’s lost games but not his dignity.
“Losing sucks,” he said after trailing 40-10 Saturday night, “but it is what it is. As a coach, you know how we got here. You understand exactly how we got here. You understand all the situations and variables that got us in this situation right now. What you do is you just come out and continue to work and continue to fight. I think every one of our guys has gotten better.
“You have to find little victories in those situations. I’ve been on the top end a lot in my life. Being down at the bottom, you have learn how to handle it like a champ and be there for the kids and continue to fight and get better.”
3. Charter members
The Aztecs budget four charter flight legs, or the equivalent of two round trips, in a typical season, well below most Mountain West programs. They have to use them wisely.
It helped this season that there was no trip to Wyoming, where they almost always charter because the commercial alternative requires a flight to Denver and 2½-hour bus ride over a mountain pass, weather permitting.
It also helped that donors independently provided a round-trip charter for the Nevada trip last month.
SDSU used two of the legs for the Air Force trip earlier that week. The Aztecs used a third leg Saturday night to fly home from Fresno given the quick turnaround to a Tuesday night home date against San Jose State.
“It helps, a lot, that we can sleep in our beds, because we have to practice (Sunday),” Dutcher said. “I can’t imagine having to stay overnight and fly commercial back and head right to the practice floor. This is a tremendous advantage for us heading into Tuesday.”
There were only two nonstop commercial flights from Fresno on Sunday, both on Alaska Airlines. One was at 4:45 p.m., arriving at 6 — too late to practice. The other was at 6:10 a.m., allowing players only a few hours’ sleep.
The 30-seat charter jet left Fresno Yosemite International Airport at 10:14 p.m., barely an hour after the game, and arrived in San Diego at 11:13. They were back on campus before midnight.
“It wasn’t about the distance but the turnaround to the next game,” Dutcher said. “If we had three days between games, then maybe we would have flown back commercial, knowing we would take a day off anyway. But we have to work (Sunday), so it’s going to be good to get back (Saturday night).”
That leaves them with one charter leg. They’ll use it next week after playing at UNLV, a similar situation with the regular-season finale three days later at home against Boise State.
