LARAMIE, Wyo. – As much as San Diego State’s basketball team enjoyed its annual trip to Wyoming, it didn’t plan to spend an extra night.
But the Aztecs didn’t have much choice when their charter flight home after the 72-69 victory was delayed indefinitely because of a mechanical issue that might not be repaired until the wee hours of the morning.
“Not what you want to hear,” coach Brian Dutcher said.
The charter company informed SDSU that the flight to Brown Field would initially be delayed two hours while they repaired a faulty sensor. They thought they could drive an hour each way to obtain the necessary part, only for that location not to have it in stock. The next closest dealer was a four-hour round-trip away, at which point team staffers called their Laramie hotel to see if, uh, it had any rooms available for the night.
It did, and the team checked back in.
Unlike programs from power conferences and even several in the Mountain West, SDSU takes commercial flights to most road games. In a typical season, the team is allotted four charter legs and uses two of them flying to and from Laramie, which otherwise requires a commercial flight to Denver followed by a 2½ drive over a mountain .
This isn’t the first time there has been a problem. The Aztecs have endured several delays leaving Laramie after the game because of mechanical or scheduling issues. But the mother of all charter adventures happened in January 2012, when the inbound leg took nearly 20 hours – 3½ longer than driving the 1,000-plus miles from San Diego – after their initial 30-seat plane had a crack in the wing and the smaller replacement didn’t have sufficient range without stopping to refuel.
The first stop was in Cedar City, Utah, … during a snowstorm. The airport was closed by the time the plane had refueled, and the team found a local motel with vacancy for the night. They resume the journey the following morning, requiring another fuel stop in Grand Junction, Colo.
The Aztecs didn’t land in Laramie until a few hours before the game, missed their midday shootaround and did a walk-through in a hotel ballroom instead. They won, reboarded the 19-seat turboprop and headed home, stopping at Grand Canyon Airport to refuel in the middle of the night while players shivered in an unheated terminal. They arrived back at campus shortly before sunrise.
Flying directly to Las Vegas ahead of Tuesday’s game is not an option because of an NIL event with the team Sunday afternoon that has been scheduled for several weeks. The plan now is to depart Laramie at 9 a.m. Sunday, arrive back on campus about 11 a.m., watch film of UNLV followed by a light practice, eat lunch, then attend the event.
