AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. – Three thoughts on San Diego State’s 77-76 overtime win at Air Force on Wednesday night:
1. 5 Crack
Painted along one side of the court at Clune Arena are images of the Air Force Academy’s iconic chapel and the mountains backing it. With 4.5 seconds left and San Diego State’s season on the line, Jared Coleman-Jones went and stood on top of Eagles Peak.
It was a subtle tweak to a play the Aztecs have run going back 25 years in late-game situations. It’s called “5 Crack,” and the basic idea is to inbound to your point guard, have him dribble up the floor, rub off a ball screen — a crack — set by your 5-man and then attack the rim.
Usually, that screen is set in the center circle, allowing the guard the option of dribbling left or right off it. That’s where Tim Shelton set it in 2011 for Xavier Thames, who weaved through USC’s defense for a last-second layup and a 56-54 win.
That’s also where Nathan Mensah set it in 2023 for Lamont Butler, down one at New Mexico with a conference title on the line, only for Butler to slow down and instead shoot a deep 3 (that went in).
This time, coach Brian Dutcher had his 5-man — the 6-foot-10, 235-pound Coleman-Jones — move toward the right sideline and the court’s mountain range.
The ball was inbounded to Wayne McKinney III at the opposite free-throw line. The general rule is you get one dribble for each second on the clock. There were 4.5 seconds left, and McKinney took five — rubbing off Coleman-Jones, then turning the corner to the basket for a layup that just beat the buzzer.
.@Waynemckinn3y is going the distance! He's going for speed! #GoAztecs pic.twitter.com/K14BwKk2Ny
— San Diego State Men's Basketball (@Aztec_MBB) January 23, 2025
There were other options. If McKinney wasn’t open, Coleman-Jones would catch the inbounds and look for a cutting BJ Davis. Magoon Gwath was stationed in the left corner in case his defender drifted to protect the basket.
Said Dutcher: “I told them, ‘I can’t tell you what shot it’s going to be, whether it’s a pull-up jumpshot, if it’s a 3, if it’s a layup, it all depends. We had Plan A, B and C. But Plan A worked, and we escaped with a win.”
Running the play down the right sideline afforded the right-handed McKinnney a better angle at the rim. Layups from a 45-degree angle along the sideline are easier than straight-on, allowing you to use the backboard (which McKinney did).
The other tweak was lining up Davis near Coleman-Jones at midcourt on the right side (on the chapel) and then having him cut hard to the opposite side of the floor as McKinney raced toward him.
“Jared crushed that guy on the screen,” Dutcher said. “And Jared’s man can’t switch it because Wayne is moving at full speed. Even if he switches it, he’s starting from a stop to a run. He can’t catch him. There’s no way he can beat him to the rim.
“And I had it opened up for him. Wayne had the whole side of the floor to attack with no help.”
Dutcher is the first to say that coaches can draw up last-second plays all they want on the whiteboard, but they rarely go as planned.
And sometimes, magically, they do.
2. Foul numbers
The Aztecs have had a free throw disparity all season. The troubling part: It’s getting worse.
Air Force shot 44 on Wednesday, a school record for a Mountain West game and 17 more than the Aztecs. This comes three days after UNLV had a 27-16 edge in free throw attempts.
Some perspective: In 37 games last season, SDSU’s opponents attempted at least seven more free throws only once, and that was 11 at New Mexico amid a flurry of questionable calls. Midway through this season, it’s already happened six times — eight once, 11 once, 13 twice, 17 once and 18 once.
Three of those games ended in losses, and Wednesday probably should have been a fourth had the Falcons not been the third-worst free-throw shooting team in Division I. (They clanked 14 of 44).
Another way to look at it: SDSU’s opponents this season are getting 24.2% of their points from the line, which ranks 16th nationally. The Aztecs are getting only 17.6% of their points there.
Surrendering free throws, of course, means you’re fouling, and the Aztecs are. A lot.
The 31 fouls are their most for a single game in at least 17 seasons. Three days earlier against UNLV, they hacked the Rebels 24 times, which was then the season-high.
Two fouls Wednesday came on 3-point attempts by the Falcons.
“Fouling 3-point shooters, we can’t have,” Dutcher said. “The loose ball stuff, where they’re throwing it in and we’re digging the ball out, sometimes they call that and sometimes they don’t, depending on how they’re calling the game. … Was it a foul? I don’t know. It was today, and we didn’t adjust.”
Bottom line: They got away with it Wednesday because Air Force is historically awful at the line this season. But they won’t, you figure, going forward.
3. Reviewing the reviews
Five minutes, 28 seconds.
That’s how long the officials’ video review in overtime lasted to determine that an Air Force tip-in off a missed free throw was not goaltending and that one-tenth of a second should be added to the clock to 4.5 seconds.
The final 2½ minutes of regulation and five minutes of overtime took 42 minutes in real time.
The last 20 seconds of regulation, which had two reviews, took 7½ minutes.
There two video reviews at the end of regulation and two more in overtime lasted a combined 14½ minutes.
“It’s hard to have an opinion unless you see what’s actually involved,” Dutcher said. “How long does it take to get the angle they want? How many angles are there? If you’re playing a game at Air Force, is there only one angle to look at compared to if you’re playing a big CBS game and there are multiple other cameras? And if they have a bad angle, it takes so much longer to see what really happened.
“I don’t think it’s all on the officials.”
Instead of shortening reviews, Dutcher offered a way to eliminate some of them.
His idea: Let officials automatically review certain calls in the final minute instead of the final two, but allow coaches to request a trip to the video monitor between two minutes and one minute left … if they burn a timeout.
“You make a coach take a timeout to review, that’s a whole different ballgame,” Dutcher said. “If you want a review between two minutes and one minute, you use a timeout. How many reviews will that cut out? A lot, I bet.”
At the very least, it’s a good conversation starter. Because 7½ minutes of real time to play 20 seconds of basketball is beyond ridiculous.
