What San Diego State head coach Brian Dutcher said before matchup vs. North Carolina

San Diego State will begin its NCAA tournament run on Tuesday night, taking on North Carolina in a first four game in Dayton, Ohio.

The Aztecs, participating in their fifth consecutive NCAA tournament, waited anxiously on Sunday to hear their name called. As an 11-seed in the South Region, the winner of Tuesday’s game will head to Milwaukee to take on six-seed Ole Miss on Friday.

North Carolina advanced to the semifinal round of the ACC tournament before falling to Duke for the third time this season. The Aztecs lost to Boise State in the quarterfinal round of the Mountain West Conference tournament, ending a streak of 17 consecutive victories in the quarterfinal round. The Aztecs and Tarheels have played twice previously, 1988 in San Diego and 1990 in Chapel Hill.

Here’s everything San Diego State head coach Brian Dutcher said on Monday ahead of Tuesday night’s first four game.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, just a statement of this team and what they've been able to do this year and making it here to March Madness and the NCAA Tournament.

BRIAN DUTCHER: Just excited to be here. We lost 90 percent of our scoring, 90 percent of our minutes from a year ago. So basically, a new team. Found its way through a hectic season and we're playing in March. That's a great accomplishment. We're proud of our efforts. We're proud of the way we finished the season, and we're proud to be here in Dayton representing San Diego State University.

Q: Dutch, what type of challenge is it hearing your name called Sunday, traveling and playing Tuesday, knowing that this is part of the tournament setting, sometimes you play with one day prep after winning a game or a conference tournament, you play multiple games in multiple days. What kind of experience and turnaround is this for you?

BRIAN DUTCHER: I've been coming to this event for a long time, and this is something brand new. I've been to four National Championship games, three at Michigan as an assistant, one as a head coach at San Diego State, but I've never been in the First Four. So this is a new experience. It's rapid. Coaches are overthinkers anyway, so we always complain and worry we don't have enough time to get ready. But at the end of the day, March is for players. Our guys will be ready. We'll give them a game plan tomorrow morning and we'll play tomorrow night. We didn't get a chance to practice. We didn't have our flight confirmed, I think, until like 9:30 last night. Met at the arena at 8:15; flew out at 9:00; had to come to the public practice. And so they watched a little tape on the plane; we sat down after a quick meal at the hotel and watched individuals. So we're just in the infancy of a game plan. So tomorrow morning will be critical, concentrating. And that's why these conference tournaments are always so good, because you play three games in three days so you're used to quick prep. So we will quick prep and be ready to play tomorrow night.

Q. Dutch, how have you adapted without Magoon over the last six games, and what are you hoping for his impact to be in the game tomorrow night?

BRIAN DUTCHER: Well, I became a worse coach without Magoon, so hopefully I'll be a good coach again. Magoon is our freshman big. He was freshman of the year in the Mountain West Conference, Defensive Player of the Year in the Mountain West Conference, and he's been out of action since February 22, I believe, so basically six games. He got hurt two minutes into the Utah State game. So now he practiced full yesterday, limited reps but full go, and so our intention is to have him on the court tomorrow

Q. Your players were up here, they were talking about the Mountain West Conference, and one thing I thought was interesting was elevation. For you, you've highlighted this, being around basketball for a long time. One, elevation and the significance of that at that point in the league; but then also just the toughness of your league and what we've seen here in the last decade.

BRIAN DUTCHER: Yeah, playing at altitude is very difficult. Our biggest jump as a program is when we got rid of travel partners because we'd have to spend three and four days at altitude to play that second game. Now if we play at altitude, we try to get out the next day, get home, and before we go back and play another game at altitude. So it usually takes 24 to 36 hours you have the best chance to play. If you stay beyond that, it takes two weeks to acclimate. You look at your team sometimes and you say, why are we running a quick sign? Why are we a half step slow to everything? It's usually the altitude. A half step slow will get you beat. And the other teams know that. New Mexico, Air Force, Wyoming, they all post in the locker room the signs of altitude sickness, so they use it as a psychological tool. I don't think anyone in the country is dealing with that other than us and others that play in the Mountain West, but we're playing at 7,000 feet, and it makes a difference. We've been tough enough to endure it, so find ways to win in these hard environments against good teams, too. I'm not saying the only reason we get beat is altitude. They've got good teams and they're playing at altitude, so that makes it doubly tough sometimes in the Mountain West. I don't think people in the nation really appreciate what that's like.

Q. In a short period of time you've had since you found out it's North Carolina, when you see the job Hubert Davis has done, what do you see from North Carolina that sticks out on film?

BRIAN DUTCHER: They're talented. They're fast. They can score the basketball at an elite level. I looked at their schedule, and I thought we played a tough schedule, but you look at who they played. It's Auburn, Alabama, Florida, Michigan State, Duke three times -- you're talking about all the No. 1 and 2 seeds in the tournament. Yeah, they would have liked to win some of those games, but those are really good teams. Coach Davis has done a great job holding them together through some tough losses and they're playing their best basketball, which you want to do. That's a sign of a really good coach, when your team plays its best basketball in March, and I think North Carolina is playing its best basketball in March.

Q. You mentioned the earlier loss to Boise State in the conference tournament. How do you rebound from a loss like that to get ready for a win-or-go-home game?

BRIAN DUTCHER: Yeah, that was tough. I think it was 17 years since we haven't got out of the quarterfinals game, and I've been the head coach eight years and played in the championship game seven times. So, we're used to winning in the Mountain West tournament and that didn't happen. Boise has got a good team. Obviously, they played differently against us in order to win. They took 40 threes. I think that's a high for the year, and they got a lot of the misses. We went back, we emphasized rebounding again is the thing we have to do at an elite level if we want to win, because we do guard hard. We're pretty efficient offensively. We're playing better down the stretch offensively, and we have to rebound the ball if we want to be really good in March.

Q. A follow-up to that question, in looking back to the Mountain West Conference tournament, did you have an idea in your head where it was kind of a win-and-in situation, and where you sort of fell last night in seeing your name called and being on the bubble?

BRIAN DUTCHER: Yeah, it was tough. We try to take care of all the things we can when we schedule. We played the seventh toughest non-conference schedule in the country this year because we know that's important to the committee. And even that being said, with wins over Houston and Creighton and then our crosstown team UCSD who won both regular season conference tournament and the Big West. We were one of the last two teams in. We have to continue to study what the committee is looking at and schedule appropriately. We want to play the toughest schedule we can play, but sometimes that's hard. The better we are, the less teams want to play us. The NIL event worked out great for us in Vegas. It gave us three really good games. Obviously, we have losses this year to Gonzaga and Oregon, so we continue to try to schedule up to put ourselves in a position where we can play in March based on what we do in the non-conference and trying to have a good Mountain West record.

Q. You touched on it, but when you consider what you've overcome to get here, when Reese Waters goes down, you can't prepare for this. Weeks in front of your season you lose a veteran pivotal piece from a team last year that was in the Sweet 16; you lose Magoon Gwath. You've played six underclassmen with eligibility all year long. What does it say about this group that they've reached this point with an opportunity to do more?

BRIAN DUTCHER: That they're gritty, they're tough, they have something about them that -- we went on more scoring runs this year than I've ever seen in my career. Down 18, 19 points and go on a 17-0 run, 20-0 run, 18-0 run all in one season. They've got a toughness about them, when things aren't going right, that they don't give in, that they find a way to continue to fight for 40, and that's allowed us to have some success. They're young. They make young mistakes. But it's not a lack of effort. It's not a lack of fight. That's what's allowed us to be sitting here today.

Q. Has there been something that's surprised you about this group?

BRIAN DUTCHER: Well, sometimes I say it's like coaching and sometimes it's like babysitting. When it's coaching, we're better. When I'm babysitting, it's harder. They're young, but they're getting better. They're getting better. Hopefully in the NIL era, I can return this team next year. I've got a lot of really good players that are supposed to come back next year, and we'll grow from this year, try to make a run this year, and then be better next year.

Q. How do you make sure the players are mentally prepared knowing one loss could end the season?

BRIAN DUTCHER: Yeah, that's the beauty of this year. The ending is so sudden no matter how much you know it's one-and-done. When you go in the locker room and the season is over, it's devastating, whether it's losing to Connecticut two years ago in the championship game or losing to Connecticut last year in the Sweet 16. Over the last two years we're seven in UConn. We ran into them twice and they're the national champs. Hopefully we can continue that run and find UConn in the bracket somewhere down the road and get our revenge. But winning in March is hard. I remember our first -- my first head coaching NCAA victory, everybody was so happy for me, and I was more happy for the kids. I've never been like that. I just like those moments where you can see them celebrate, when you can see them see their name come up on the TV, and then to be there for them when things don't go right, when you lose a game, you don't feel you should have. That's all part of coaching and that's all part of the journey we're all on together.

Q. Amongst the experience, this time of the year and being able to advance, you've had a lot -- well, part of it. What is sort of the biggest takeaway and telling your group, especially this young group, of sort of what to be prepared for?

BRIAN DUTCHER: Just play with swagger. Don't be afraid. I don't want to lose with a scared team. So that might open it up for some mistakes, some wild shots. They might interpret that as being crazy. But you can't win being scared. We'll go out there and I'll live with some shots they take, as long as we're competing at a high level, defending the way I know we can. And I'll live with a shot or two that people might be watching from the stands or the sidelines saying, what is he doing? But I want them confident. You can't win in March unless you're confident, and I want a confident group out there tomorrow night.

Q. Conditioning-wise, and that plays a big part, how deep do you go in your bench during this time of year?

BRIAN DUTCHER: We've been going nine or ten deep all year. With Magoon, we go 10 deep, and we'll go 10 deep tomorrow. The way we play defense and what we ask them to do, you can't play that way for 40 if you're on the floor the whole time. So, we try to pick the ball up, try to pressure, try to compete at a high level. So, we've been deep all year, and we'll continue to play deep tomorrow.

Q. Talking about Magoon's status and looking ahead towards tomorrow, just what you've seen from him here in an incredible freshman year. Did you expect his impact and what he's been able to do immediately stepping on the stage of the college game?

BRIAN DUTCHER: Yeah, we redshirted Magoon last year, so we knew kind of what we had. I think Magoon is potentially an NBA player. To do that as a freshman is hard to do. But he's gotten better as the season has gone on, and until he got hurt, arguably he was playing the best basketball of his career the last eight games. Smart, staying out of foul trouble, blocking shots, scoring from every level, three, in the post, off the dribble. We'll see how he does. He's missed a lot of basketball. Just to throw him out there and expect he's going to be perfect is hard to do. But we're not going to win in March unless he's really good. So that's why we want to make sure first and foremost he was healthy and now we've got to hope that he can catch up timing-wise to the game as it goes having not played for three weeks.

Q. You've had a lot of success playing at home. You won 12 games this year, 14 last year. What is it about San Diego State that makes you have so much success on your home floor?

BRIAN DUTCHER: It's a lot like the Dayton environment. We have great home crowds. We're sold out on the season. We have a great student section. When we're not playing well, the crowd gets behind us. They don't get on us. They motivate us to play harder. They're a huge difference in our success. The Mountain West has some great home court environments. Utah State is incredible; The Pit in New Mexico is incredible; Colorado State sold out; Boise. We play in some of the best environments in the country. Every coach feels his conference is the hardest to play in because it's the one he's in. But the Mountain West has got great fan bases that really support their teams, and it's a challenge to win games in our conference.

MORE SAN DIEGO STATE NEWS & ANALYSIS

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What San Diego State's Brian Dutcher said after loss against Boise State in Mountain West Conference Tournament

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