San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher reacts to costly loss at Boise State

The San Diego State Aztecs’ late-season swoon continued with an 86-77 loss at Boise State that pushed them to the brink of elimination from the Mountain West regular-season title.

It was an ugly night overall, with the glaring downfall being BSU’s 37-15 rebounding advantage.

“We know what it was. We said the number one key to the game is rebounding,” coach Brian Dutcher said. “We can sit and watch tape, but we know what it is. It's whether we can address it or not. We didn't get it done. We showed tape from New Mexico. There have been games we do a good job boxing out, but when they shoot this many threes, a lot of them are rebounding all over the place and you’ve got to hit and run them down. I'm sure we'll look on tape and see where we didn't get the job done.

“Sometimes it's easy to blame the bigs, but it's all five guys that have to hit someone and rebound. We were switching, so we had a guard on a big a lot, so that's always a tough matchup. When you get outrebounded 37-15, you're never going to win when that happens and when you have two offensive rebounds but one of them is a dead ball team rebound. Tae Simmons got one offensive rebound for us.”

That’s how bad it was.

SDSU hosts UNLV on Saturday night in the regular-season finale. The Aztecs have wrapped up a bye into Thursday’s quarterfinals of the MW conference tournament in Las Vegas.

Here are the highlights of Dutcher and the players’ news conference.

Dutcher on the game overall

“We played competitive, we fought. You wouldn't say we gave in. A lot of teams that give in, you're going to go from 20 down to 30, and we fought our way back to seven with a free throw and had the ball. We didn't give in. We fought back twice. I like our fight; I just don't like some of the things we're doing. Obviously, we gave up 81 to New Mexico and 86 tonight. We're a program that prides ourselves on defense. Defense and rebounding win championships, so that's why we're not going to win a title this year in the regular season. We didn't defend and rebound at a high enough level in the last two games when we had a chance to. I put on the board before the game, believe, we’ve got to believe we can win tonight. We’ve got to believe we're a good team, and that's the case after the game. We can't go in there with one game left until the conference tournament and start doubting ourselves. We’ve got to accept responsibility for things we can get better at and then fight our way through it. That's all there is.”

Dutcher on switching defensively

“We played drop defense too. A guy like Drew Fielder that's making threes, if you're in drop, he just picks and pops and shoots threes. By switching, hopefully we're going to take some threes away and be able to give some backside support in the post. Some of his baskets were over our five men. He scored over Miles Heide and Magoon Gwath and Tae Simmons. It wasn't like switch five was the sole reason he was scoring. He was doing damage just like Tomislav Buljan did the game before. We have to get tougher in the post, whether we're switching or not. We have to offer more resistance. Rebounding is definitely an issue. To come back in the game, we went with four guards, and so now we're playing only one big and that makes rebounding an issue. Four guards is good offensively, but if you don't have Heide and Tae or Magoon and Heide, or Pharaoh Compton and Heide, you're playing small and it makes it harder to rebound.”

Dutcher on freshmen Elzie Harrington and Tae Simmons

“They're two very good freshmen. Elzie gutted it out. He couldn't go through walkthrough today and then played in the game. Give a lot of credit to Elzie, for toughing it out, and Tae plays with great energy. They still make freshman mistakes, but this is all part of the growing process. If you can't see that they're going to be very good players in our program and in the new Pac-12, then you're not watching basketball. They're very good freshmen.”

Senior guard Reese Dixon-Waters on falling behind and battling back

“We were struggling early. We had a game, and then it just got out of hand. They outrebounded us almost by 20. They were playing harder than us, tougher than us. We got back in the game. We were just never able to close the gap. I think it was definitely on our defense and our rebounding. Our offense wasn't to blame today. It wasn't anybody specifically, it was everybody.”

Dixon-Waters on rebounding

“It’s just something we’ve got to get better at. We’ve had games where we do really well, we’ve had games where we've done poorly. We’ve got to lock in on the little details, because those little details will get us beat. UNLV crashes the boards heavy. They’ve got good, athletic wings. We’ve definitely got to be better on the boards, be disciplined throughout the game, whether that's offense or defense. We’ll be better next game.”

Dixon-Waters on the team’s inconsistency

“At this point in the season, we’ve got to lock in more. We're still growing as a team, even late in the season. Next game, I think we'll be locked in.”