LARAMIE, Wyo. – Three thoughts on San Diego State’s 72-69 win at Wyoming on Saturday night:
1. Perfect timing
Remember BJ Davis?
Well, he’s back.
The sophomore guard had a torrid start to the season, which was even more impressive considering these were his first meaningful minutes after being buried on the bench on a veteran team the year before. He had 28 points in a closed-door preseason exhibition at UCLA in October, then 11 in the opener against UCSD in his first career start with senior guard Reese Waters injured. He followed that with 16, 15, 18 and 18.
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First five games: 15.6 points, 60% shooting overall, 10 of 20 behind the arc.
And then …
Next 19 games: 6.7 points, 35.5% shooting, 18 of 61 behind the arc (29.5%).
And then …
Last three games: 12.7 points, 61.1% shooting, 10 of 16 behind the arc (62.5%).
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“I just had to get back to my roots,” Davis said after equaling his career high of 18 points in his first trip to the 7,220 feet of Wyoming. “I had to do all the things that got me here to this place, be the same person I was that got me here. That’s what I fell back to, just trying to be myself, more comfortable in my own skin.
“Getting in the gym extra, getting an early night’s rest. It’s just the little stuff that the greatest athletes do, and it shows.”
The timing couldn’t be better. Miles Byrd also had 18 on Saturday, his most in 11 games. His sprained right thumb continues to heal, and he said he received a pain-killing injection last week in his balky hip that has bothered him on and off for the last two seasons.
Nick Boyd also is playing his best basketball of the season. So is Miles Heide and Jared Coleman-Jones. So was Magoon Gwath before hyperextending his knee, but his rehab seems to be progressing. He could return as early as this week.
“Goon went down, everybody had to pick up the slack for him because he’s an incredible player,” Davis said. “We all have to be better to make up for his absence.”
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Consider this mind-blowing stat: Over the past three games (an eight-point loss, an eight-point win, a three-point win), all but two minutes of which were without Gwath, the Aztecs are an aggregate plus-3 points. And plus-43 when Davis has been on the floor.
And don’t forget that he was the primary defender on the first and fourth leading scorers in the Mountain West, New Mexico’s Donovan Dent and Wyoming’s Obi Agbim.
“Just got his confidence back up,” Dutcher said. “He got back in the gym. He wasn’t shooting as much as he was earlier. I think he was tired over (the semester break) and rested more. Now he’s got his swagger back up. It’s great to see.”
2. Metrics deception
The Aztecs are 20-7 and projected as a No. 9 or 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament by most leading bracketologists, which translates to somewhere between the nation’s 33rd and 40th best team. So how come the NET and a few other metrics have them in the 50s?
The simple answer is that they play their best basketball against the best teams, which also means the opposite is true.
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Bart Torvik’s T-rank includes filters for date parameters as well as quality of opposition. Remove Quad 4 games (against the bottom tier of teams), and the Aztecs go from 56 overall to 36 – the highest jump among the top 75 teams which, presumably, are vying for NCAA Tournament spots.
Compare that to Boise State, which sits at 43 overall in T-rank but drops to 63 when you remove Quad 4 games. Or Colorado State, which goes from 50 to 65.
That’s because they beat up on lesser foes, gaming the metrics with lopsided wins that overperform the computer’s projected margin.
The Aztecs aren’t built that way, a defensive-oriented team with what at times is an anemic offense incapable of achieving 30- and 40-point routs. They rank 13th in defensive efficiency this season, 111th in offensive efficiency.
Their nonconference schedule, ranked as the ninth most difficult in the nation, wasn’t built that way, either. They played four straight games in November against teams ranked in the Associated Press top 25 instead of a diet of metric-juicing cupcakes.
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They’ve played 12 Quad 3 or 4 games this season and outperformed the projected margin of victory in only four – and just once in the last seven. Over the course of the season, they’re a combined 50 points worse than the projected spread.
In one two-week stretch, they lost a Quad 3 home game against UNLV despite being favored by 10.5 points and had three close calls against Air Force, San Jose State and Wyoming despite being favored by 13 or 14 points. That was accompanied by a nine-spot slide in the NET metric.
Saturday’s projected spread was seven. The Aztecs won by three.
“I’ve got one more trip here,” Dutcher said of Wyoming, which won’t be part of the reformed Pac-12 in 2026-27. “God bless, I love Laramie, I love the people of Laramie, but I won’t be coming back. As long as I’m an Aztecs coach, I won’t be bringing a team here. I know how hard it is.”
3. Consortium conundrum
When the Pac-12 disintegrated and the Western Basketball Officiating Consortium (WBOC) followed suit, the other five Division I conferences in the West needed to find a new source of striped shirts.
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The WCC, Big West, Big Sky and WAC all followed WBOC coordinator John Higgins to the Big 12, where he assumed a similar role and brought many of the top Pac-12 officials with him. The Mountain West broke ranks and joined the College Officiating Consortium (COC) that supplies the Big Ten and several smaller Midwest leagues.
“The Mountain West,” Commissioner Gloria Nevarez said in a statement last spring announcing the move, “will continue to see high-level officiating, evaluations and trainings that will enhance our conference and the student-athlete experience.”
The idea was that the top Big Ten officials would make West Coast swings to work conference games with UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington, then detour to Mountain West schools along the way. But whether because of the travel logistics of shipping Midwest-based officials across the country or a deprioritization of the Mountain West, it hasn’t quite worked out like that.
The Kenpom metric ranks officials on the theory that the best refs are assigned to the best games. Eight of the current top 15 are regulars in the Big Ten, working a combined 173 conference games but only 18 in the Mountain West.
Another way to look at it is the average Kenpom ranking of a three-person crew. In eight SDSU games between Feb. 1 and March 1 last season, it was 84.
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This season: 110.
Saturday’s crew at Wyoming was the latest insult for a program that reached the national championship game and Sweet 16 in the past two seasons.
There was No. 59 Michael Irving, one of the West Coast-based officials who jumped to the COC after the WBOC disbanded. There was No. 125 Chad Barlow, who hasn’t been deemed worthy of working a single Big Ten game this season and instead is primarily assigned to the MAC and Horizon League. And there was Juan Corral, a Division II official who has worked only 15 Division I games this season and none since Feb. 18 (when he also had the Aztecs). He’s ranked 361st.
Corral was the ref who whistled a technical foul on Davis after he made a 3 and looked at his own bench to, in his words, “turn my guys up, like, ‘Let’s go, guys. Let’s do it.’”
Barlow was the ref who T-ed up Miles Byrd seven seconds later.
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“All of a sudden, it was about the officiating instead of the game,” Dutcher said. “I was hoping they wouldn’t interject themselves too much. I’m sitting courtside. I didn’t see a lot of crap talking between the two teams back and forth.”
SDSU and the four other Mountain West defectors have one more season of the COC before joining the new Pac-12, which has not yet decided on an officiating consortium for basketball.
This month, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, is a fitting time for reflection. Our focus turns toward family and community, and the changing weather causes us to slow down. It is a good time to take stock of the society around us. The Thanksgiving holiday naturally turns our minds to what we are grateful for — what already exists that we cherish. Christmas is a holiday of hope, focused on the promise of what is yet to come. With these holidays in mind, let us reflect on what parts of our state we are thankful for and hopeful about.
Perhaps the thing Wyomingites hold most dear is our heritage. Culturally, we are descended from pioneers and settlers — or from those who came before — and we take that frontier heritage to heart. We value independence, community and overcoming challenges. We are willing to endure hardship to build a life that we want, and we are closely attuned to the natural world and the benefits that it provides. Above all else, we know that our perch in this place is still precarious. These are perspectives that are hard to find elsewhere. They set us apart. By embracing these values, we create a society that fits our circumstances. These ideas would not fit in other places, but they fit here, and for that I am grateful.
I am also thankful for the good stewardship of our forefathers. Wyoming is a harsh place and it’s challenging to thrive here. Most of our land is arid and inhospitable, our physical conditions are difficult, and we are remote from most modern conveniences and luxuries. With poor planning or shortsighted leadership, this place could easily fall into decline.
Fortunately, we have been blessed with the opposite. The state’s early settlers understood the importance of building the infrastructure that would allow for growth. When it became clear that natural resources would power our economy, our leaders decided to set aside large portions of the state’s mineral revenue to support us in perpetuity. The easy decision — the short-sighted decision — would have been to spend those dollars on the needs of the day. They certainly could have built some nice things, and those projects would have been popular. They also would have been fleeting. Because of wise leadership and decisions that focused on the long-term, we all benefit from our state’s bounty.
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Just as we are grateful for the good decisions of the past, we should be hopeful for the future. Despite our state’s challenges, there are many good reasons to have hope. First, our state is full of opportunity. We have space, natural resources, and the ability to be nimble when it comes to building regulatory structures that can support new industries. Our people are hard-working and determined. We have existing expertise in manufacturing and mining that is missing in many other parts of the country. Our climate and location give Wyoming an advantage in attracting computing facilities to locate here. If we take advantage of the opportunities in front of us, Wyoming is poised to thrive, and that gives me hope.
I am also hopeful because there appears to be a growing consensus on the issues we face, which allows us to better meet these challenges. In surveys and conversations about Wyoming’s future, the challenges of economic diversification and talent retention quickly rise to the top. We recognize where our weaknesses are, which is a significant part of the battle. Once we agree on the problem, we can work to find solutions.
Finding a fix is often an easier undertaking than identifying the problem itself. Already, drilling into these challenges has helped us recognize the underlying problems connected to affordable housing, livable spaces, health care access and education. Understanding how these fit together and how improvements in one area can lead to improvements in others puts us on a much more manageable path. It will still not be easy to overcome our hurdles, but the fact that we must wrestle with difficult problems is not unusual or unique. We have answered big questions before. Now that we have a growing consensus on what those problems are, I am far more hopeful about our ability to move forward.
In this holiday season, we should take the time to contemplate the world around us. Self-reflection is important. We should look both behind us and ahead of us, toward the past and gratitude and the future and hope. Our state gives us plenty to consider on both accounts.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The Wyoming Department of Transportation has reported that the ongoing high wind speeds throughout the state have caused 39 vehicles to crash on Wyoming highways so far this week, primarily between Dec. 9 and Dec. 11.
According to a report from WYDOT, most of the crashes occurred on Interstate 80 near Cooper Cove west of Laramie, on I-25 on Wyo Hill south of Cheyenne and along I-25 near Wheatland at Bordeaux. Many blown-over vehicles were underweight, and some trailers were even empty.
WYDOT updates the minimum weights listed on overhead digital messaging signs based on real-time wind speeds. Drivers are encouraged to check weight-based wind closure information often to ensure travel is permitted.
It’s not just commercial vehicles that are at risk, either; the department reports that campers, toy-haulers and other large trailers are also susceptible to blowing over in strong winds.
June skiing and pond-skimming at Arapahoe Basin in Colorado
Skiers and snowboarders soak in the sun and attempt to make it across a pond on a June day at Arapahoe Basin in Colorado
Snowy Range ski area is scheduled to open for the season on Dec. 12.
Daily lift ticket prices range from $40 for children to $69 for adults.
Snowy Range, one of the closest ski areas to Fort Collins, is scheduled to open for the season Dec. 12 and remain open through April 12, 2026.
The ski area had a snow depth of about 30 inches on Dec. 9, spokesperson Kate Lessman told the Coloradoan in an email.
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Daily lift tickets range in price from $59-$69 purchased onsite for adults, $52-$62 for teenagers ages 13-17 and $40-$50 for children ages 5-12. Children age 4 and younger and senior citizens age 70 and older can ski for free. Tickets purchased in advance online are discounted $5.
More: Complete Colorado ski resort guide
Snowy Range Ski and Recreation Area is located about 100 miles northwest of Fort Collins and 36 miles west of Laramie, Wyoming.
For additional information, visit the ski area’s website.
Coloradoan reporter Kelly Lyell can be reached at KellyLyell@coloradoan.com. Follow him on x.com/KellyLyell, threads.net/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.
