HOUSTONHOUSTON — One more sunset. One more chance to breathe deep, soak up the brilliance of a technicolor dream as it sinks toward the horizon and truly savor the type of opportunity that is reserved for so few.
San Diego State’s giant jigsaw puzzle of a basketball team — Matt Bradley from Cal, Darrion Trammell from Seattle University, Jaedon LeDee from Ohio State and TCU, Micah Parrish from Oakland University in suburban Detroit and on and on — has one more game to share a head-shaker of a run they’ll talk about until dentures enter the picture.
Win or lose on Monday night in the NCAA championship game against broad-shouldered UConn at NRG Stadium, they’ve taken this thing as far as a season and logic allows.
One more sunset. Don’t blink. Don’t dare miss a second.
“It’s legendary,” Trammell said. “We’ve come too far to lose it. We don’t what the future holds, so we’re going to embrace it.”
Embrace it. Bear-hug it. Cling to it like a winning lottery ticket.
These kinds of things might happen to mortal programs once in a lifetime, if that. For coach Brian Dutcher to mold all that mismatched clay into a kiln-ready winner — kneading in players like Nathan Mensah and Aguek Arop, both of whom chose to return for something just like this — makes all those emotional colors shimmer.
Come Tuesday morning, this ends for a core component of this galloping group.
“We jelled perfectly, on and off the court,” Trammell explained. “We built relationships that are lifelong, beyond basketball. … We have to cherish this.”
Mensah, Arop, Bradley and six-year guard Adam Seiko will be gone. Semifinal, buzzer-beating junior Lamont Butler previously has said he might test the NBA waters. Forward Keshad Johnson said Sunday he still is considering whether or not to return.
You can feel the fleeting nature of this, despite playing a season to its final second.
“Life is way bigger than basketball,” LeDee said. “Basketball is the vessel that brought us all together, at the end of the day. But when the ball stops bouncing, we’re going to have these friendships forever. That’s what it’s all about.”
There were so many ways this could have fallen apart. Different players from different programs playing different styles with different expectations. The magic of it all, though, is that it didn’t.
The Aztecs survived No. 1 Alabama. Ditto that for offensively gifted Creighton. Ditto that for upstart Florida Atlantic. Each time San Diego State pulled its head out of the lion’s mouth, it made the road more special.
Why has it worked?
“Who they are as people,” assistant coach David Velasquez said. “They all have fought in the same direction all season. They all came here for the right reasons. The reasons weren’t for NIL (money). They came here to win.
“Micah Parrish played (more than 34) minutes at Oakland. He knew Matt Bradley was going to be here and he probably wouldn’t play that many minutes for us. Darrion Trammell scores 39 points in his last game in Seattle. He’s not coming here to score 39 points. He’s coming to be on this stage.”
The Aztecs have stretched this season as long as it can go, testing elasticity in ways no one could have imagined.
That’s what special seasons demand.
“These guys are Aztecs legends for life, at this point,” Velasquez said. “No one can take that away from us. (Monday) night shouldn’t change that. Won’t change that.”
This isn’t a team with a Zach Edey of Purdue, Drew Timme of Gonzaga, Brandon Miller of Alabama or Jalen Wilson of Kansas. The NCAA Tournament ended for those players, regardless of individual skill, is over.
Bradley, the Aztecs’ leading scorer, averages just 12.7 points per game. Seven of his teammates score between 5.9 and 9.7 points.
Sunsets are better when they’re shared.
“It’s all about the guys you get,” Seiko said. “We’re not a program that’s always looking for the five-stars. … We look for guys who are good on the court and even better people off the court.”
Goodbye, selfish. Hello, selfless.
“The hardest challenge is getting everyone to buy in,” Arop said. “’Dutch’ would say he knew we were going to be great. He just didn’t know when. Buying into the connectedness, that’s the biggest key.”
That connectedness will be tested mightily against UConn. The Huskies’ average win in the tournament has come by a staggering 20.6 points. They’re second in the country in rebounding margin.
They’re big. And they’re favored by a touchdown or more by most.
But … this group.
“Utmost respect those guys (who transferred or came back) to be able to sacrifice everything that they’ve had in their career to come and see the bigger picture,” Johnson said.
The moment is in no way lost on Dutcher.
“I’ll these guys because they were my original group,” he said. “A coach always his first team. … When I got hired all those years ago with (previous coach Steve) Fisher, Rick Bay, our athletic director, he just said, ‘You know, you’ve got to have good students and then you’ve got to have good citizens and then you’ve got to have a good team. If you’re lacking in any of those areas, you can’t feel good about it. If you’re winning games with kids that don’t graduate and have bad kids, no one is going to feel good about that.’”
Dutcher feels just fine with this group.
It’s been stunning and beautiful, like a Southern California sunset.
