Usually on Selection Sunday, the San Diego State men’s basketball team is looking for the seed number next to its name.
This year was different. It was just looking for its name.
And there it was: San Diego State, as a No. 11 seed in the South Region headed to Dayton, Ohio, for First Four play-in game against North Carolina on Tuesday (6:10 p.m. PDT, truTV) after initially believing they would play Wednesday.
The winner goes to Milwaukee, about 400 miles away, to face No. 6 seed Mississippi on Friday (1:05 p.m. PDT, TNT).
The Aztecs watched the Selection Show not in their usual venue, an auditorium in the athletic department surrounded by staff, family, boosters and media. Instead, the team practiced early Sunday afternoon (with, news flash, 7-foot freshman Magoon Gwath participating), then gathered inside their windowless locker room at Viejas Arena to watch by themselves – just in case their name didn’t appear on the CBS telecast.
But it did, greeted with much whooping and hollering, plus a fair amount of relief.
That makes it five straight NCAA Tournaments (and it would be six had the pandemic not forced cancellation in 2020) and 12 of the last 15. Coach Brian Dutcher has been to six of the seven tournaments in his tenure as head coach, reaching the national championship game in 2023 and Sweet 16 last year.
“I’m going through a lot of emotions right now,” said senior guard Wayne McKinney III, who transferred from USD to SDSU for his final season with the specific goal of playing in the NCAA Tournament. “The work I’ve put in over the last four years, to finally be able to sit here on Selection Sunday and hear our team’s name called, it was amazing.
“A lot of emotions. It’s definitely been a stressful couple of days.”
It was a much different scene across town at LionTree Arena, where UC San Diego held a public viewing party with the comfort that it was already in the 68-team field in its first year of eligibility after elevating from Division II — having won the Big West Tournament 18 hours earlier in Henderson, Nev., and claiming the conference’s automatic berth.
The Tritons, then, were more interested in the number next to their name and the opponent on the next line.
The verdict: a No. 12 seed, also in the South Region, against No. 5 Michigan in Denver on Thursday (7 p.m. PDT, TBS).
The 30-4 Tritons likely will be underdogs despite possessing the nation’s longest winning streak at 15, a NET ranking of 35 and receiving votes in the Associated Press top 25. Just don’t tell them that.
“The process doesn’t change,” said senior Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones, the Big West player of the year and tournament MVP. “It’s still going to be the same things up on the board before the game. Nothing changes for us. We’re just going to go out and do what we do.”
CBS Sports’ Seth Davis is a believer, immediately picking the Tritons to reach the Sweet 16.
SDSU has a longer road to reach its third straight Sweet 16, starting with a game 1,889 miles away just 51 hours after hearing its name called on the Selection Show.
For about 45 minutes, Dutcher and his staff were under the impression they were playing Wednesday because the winner feeds into a Friday/Sunday pod in Milwaukee. The plan was to practice in San Diego on Monday morning before taking an NCAA-provided charter flight to Dayton.
Then the NCAA informed them they’re playing, ahem, on Tuesday. That means an early-morning flight to Dayton, arriving in time for a mandatory open practice that precludes working on the game plan with anyone able to watch.
And that means, because they practiced Sunday before the Selection Show, they’ll likely face UNC without a full practice behind closed doors.
Another thing: The other First Four game between 11 seeds, Xavier and Texas, also feeds into a Friday/Sunday pod but get the Wednesday game in Dayton even though Xavier is a 54-minute ride away. The NCAA is making the team crossing four time zones to play Tuesday.
Then again, the alternative for the Aztecs was the NIT.
“I know we did the work this year to be a tournament team, but it was the committee’s decision,” sophomore guard Miles Byrd said. “After getting home from Las Vegas, I’ve been on my couch the last few days on bubble watch. Glad we got our name called.”
Or as Dutcher put it: “When you’re on the bubble, a lot like North Carolina, you’re just dying to get in so you have an opportunity to play.”
Texas, Xavier, SDSU and UNC were the last four teams to receive at-large berths, in that order.
The first four out: West Virginia, Indiana, Ohio State and the Mountain West’s Boise State.
A year ago, there were five “bid stealers” who wouldn’t have otherwise made the field but got automatic bids by winning their conference tournaments, bumping five teams off the bubble. This year, there was only one after Colorado State won the Mountain West Tournament on Saturday.
The Aztecs and Tar Heels had to sweat out two more possible bid thieves in the hours before the Selection Show, but form held when Memphis prevailed in the AAC and VCU in the Atlantic 10.
Bubba Cunningham, the UNC athletic director and chair of the selection committee, was asked on CBS Sports why the Aztecs got in and Boise State, which beat them in the conference tournament last Thursday, did not.
“San Diego State really had a great year, so did Boise,” Cunningham said. “But San Diego State really had a couple of great wins early in the year in their nonconference schedule. We felt like they scheduled themselves really pretty well. They didn’t have quite as much success in the league this year, but particularly that win against Houston really buoyed their resume in the minds of the committee.
“We think that they deserve to be in, and we’re delighted that they are in.”
SDSU (21-9) and UNC (22-13) both finished fourth in their conferences and had flawed resumes. SDSU is 52 in the NET metric; UNC is 1-12 in Quad 1 games.
But the common denominator was their nonconference strength of schedule, something the selection committee repeatedly has valued above almost anything else. SDSU ranked seventh nationally, UNC fifth.
“When you play Gonzaga, you play Oregon, you play Houston, you play Creighton, and you take a neutral game against Cal, and you play UCSD who turns out to be a conference champs, you build a resume,” Dutcher said.
“We’re always looking for opportunities to play anytime, anywhere, anyone.”
The day’s other piece of good news was that Gwath, out since hyperextending his right knee on Feb. 22, practiced for the first time Sunday. He warmed up with the team last Thursday before the 62-52 loss against Boise State in Las Vegas but didn’t play. The team had Friday and Saturday off.
“Magoon looked good in practice today,” Dutcher said. “I would say he’s 100% go. They limited his reps some, but when he was in there, it was full speed and it wasn’t like you can’t touch him. He was out there and looked really good for a guy who’s been off since Feb. 22. We’re excited to have him back.”
