How to watch, listen to San Diego State vs. San Jose State men's basketball game
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San Diego State resumes its final season in the Mountain West knowing full well what it has to do to earn an invitation to March Madness.
The Aztecs (7-4, 1-0) make their last trip to San Jose State (5-7, 0-1), where they’ll face the Spartans on Tuesday night. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. and the game will be shown on CBS Sports Network.
The Aztecs were the unanimous preseason pick to win the conference championship. While that’s all well and good, their inability to win the marquee non-conference games on their schedule means they’ll likely need to win the conference tournament and its accompanying automatic bid in order to reach the NCAA Tournament.
The Aztecs currently are No. 85 in the NCAA NET Rankings, which are used by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee as the primary sorting tool for selection and seeding for March Madness. They are 0-3 in Quad 1 games, suffering double-digit losses to, in order, Michigan, Baylor and Arizona. They lost by 40 points to Michigan, which has jumped from No. 7 in The Associated Press Top 25, and by 23 to No. 1 Arizona.
The Aztecs followed up their loss to the Wildcats — on a neutral floor in Phoenix — by routing Division III Whittier 121-59 on Dec. 22. They’ve had a week to rest and then reset their focus heading back into MW play.
“It’s the late-December, early-January grind,” coach Brian Dutcher told Mark Zeigler of the San Diego Union-Tribune after practice on Sunday. “It doesn’t look like they’re having a lot of fun right now. They’re working, but there’s not a lot of joy they’re playing with. I want them to play with a little more joy and happiness, and I don’t know what I can do to get that out of them. “Hopefully, playing games will help. We’ve got to compete more, and maybe that will turn the tide of our season.”
The Aztecs have a 15-game winning streak against the Spartans in a series they lead 51-35. SDSU is 21-1 against SJSU in the MW era and Dutcher has never lost to the Spartans in his eight seasons in charge.
Dutcher’s teams are 5-0 in San Jose with an average winning margin of 7.8 points, but in each of the last two games at the Event Center, the winning margin has been trimmed to 3.0 points.
With the MW going back to an unbalanced schedule due to the addition of Grand Canyon, San Jose State will not make a trip to Viejas Arena this season.
San Jose State has lost two straight, including 88-65 at New Mexico in its MW opener on Dec. 20.
Below is a look at how to watch San Diego State at San Jose State.
How to watch San Diego State at San Jose State
Date: Tuesday, Dec. 30
Game time: 7 p.m. PT
Where: Provident Credit Union Event Center | San Jose
How to watch: CBS Sports Network
How to listen: San Diego Sports 760 (local)
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-bd678ba4dbad4f453246f539ee56a3b4.jpg "Bernie Wilson")
Bernie Wilson recently retired from The Associated Press after nearly 41 years, including stops in Spokane, Los Angeles and, for the final 33 years, San Diego. He grew up in Coeur d'Alene and graduated from the University of Idaho.