Is San Diego State’s basketball success legit?

December 30, 2010 By 3 Comments

Thus far, the 2010-2011 San Diego State basketball team is a good story. They’re one of a select few remaining undefeated schools, and therefore ranked seventh in both polls released Monday.

Former Univ. of Michigan coach and Illinois native, Steve Fisher, 65 years young, has been at the helm of the Aztecs for 11 years now, believe it or not. (I knoSteve Fisherw it’s been awhile because I was still in college when he started on “Montezuma Mesa” with much fanfare, as a long-suffering team moved into a new arena at roughly the same time.)

Yet like Tony Gwynn’s near-concurrent tenure with SDSU’s baseball team, success has been slow: just three NCAA tourney berths in 11 seasons and zero wins in those appearances.

But now national attention has arrived via the Aztecs brilliant start. Being undefeated at 14-0, they’ve been a top 25 team nearly all season and top ten most of December. San Diego State’s RPI is still 9 despite a strength of schedule of just 109, though with the Mountain West Conference again being the best out west (5th in conference RPI, and yes, still better than the Pac-10 ), their SOS should improve rapidly as we approach 2011.

Is San Diego State ‘for real,’ however? To paraphrase former Pres. Bill Clinton, that depends upon what your definition of “real” is.

Their SOS is unimpressive because their non-conference schedule has been fairly weak (though still tougher than most top ten teams). With a senior-laden team, you’d like to see a few more road games and ”best” wins against someone other than a depleted, unranked and #60 RPI Gonzaga team, a mediocre Cal squad or Wichita State and St. Mary’s at home. Then again, at least unlike the “major” programs, they’ve played road games, neutral sites and, overall, a moderately difficult non-conference schedule.

MWC play beings next week, and the Aztecs will be challenged all season by top teams like BYU (#5 RPI), UNLV (#14 RPI), New Mexico and others. We’ll have no choice but to find out how “real” SDSU is quite quickly.

Just another interesting storyline as basketball begins to take center stage in the sports world, especially in southern California.

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Filed Under: CBB Tagged With: CBB, san diego state, steve fisher
About AJ Kaufman

AJ Kaufman is the co-editor of Midwest Sports Fans, where he has been a columnist since March 2009. AJ, a former Los Angeles schoolteacher and Indiana military historian, is now a corporate journalist, compiling publications for organizations across the country. He is a supporter of anything baseball-related -- especially minor league ball -- and mid-major college hoops. The author of three books, AJ is married to Maria and currently lives in Lincoln, Neb.

Follow him on Twitter (@ajkauf7) for ruminations on sports, politics, history and travel.

  • Jaron Brown

    We'll see how they end up after the MWC schedule where the teams will beat eachother up. In conference they will play against teams that know them and will not underestimate them…

  • RON FRIEDMAN

    GOOD ARTICLE, I AGREE, TIME WILL TELL, I DO NOT THINK THEY ARE A TOP 10, BUT IT IS A TOP 20

  • http://twitter.com/ajkauf7 AJK

    True. I like them, but fear they could finish 3rd in the MWC, which will make their current ranking/RPI look laughable when they finish with another 10 seed in the tourney. But we'll see. At least college hoops has a tourney.