In the WAC, Pluses Can Produce a Championship

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. —  Once basketball teams start playing games in the Western Athletic Conference, the coaches stop talking about wins and losses. Instead, they discuss pluses and minuses.

A team gets a plus for winning a game on the road and a minus for losing at home. Most coaches and players feel that a team must steal two or three road victories and win at least seven of eight at home to have a chance at winning the conference title.

After its 60-57 come-from-behind win over Wyoming in Laramie on Thursday night, San Diego State is 9-2 and plus one going into tonight’s game against the Air Force Academy in Cadet Fieldhouse (6:30, KSDO-1130).

The plus one is particularly significant to an Aztec team that, up until this year, has had a lot of trouble winning on the road.

Until Thursday night, the Aztecs had never won in six tries in Wyoming. San Diego State is 11-35 on the road since joining the WAC in 1979, and that includes a 4-4 mark in 1982, when it went 11-5 to tie for second.

The Aztecs went 0-for-the-road in the WAC in 1979 and 1980. In fact, they lost their first 17 WAC games on the road. It took a last-second jump shot against Colorado State by guard Tony Gwynn (now a Padre) to give the San Diego State its first WAC road victory in 1981.

Last year’s team won five of eight at home but went 1-7 on the road. The Aztecs beat New Mexico in Albuquerque and then lost six straight away games.

It becomes quite clear why Thursday’s win in Laramie was such a big one. It becomes even bigger when one considers that the Aztecs (now 5-0 on the road this season) were the only visitors to win in Thursday’s conference openers.

BYU beat two-time defending champion UTEP, 62-60. Utah beat New Mexico, 68-63. Colorado State beat Hawaii, 69-58.

There are numerous reasons why it is so difficult for a college basketball team to win on the road, and most of them have been well documented.

The travel is tiring and the weather conditions are often difficult for the players to adjust to. The visiting team has to play on a strange court in front of an often-hostile crowd. And the home team feels it has a psychological advantage because it is playing at home. In Thursday night’s win over a young Wyoming team that showed its inexperience down the stretch, the Aztecs were able to deal with most of those disadvantages.

Players from San Diego State and Hawaii seem to be particularly affected by the the high altitudes in Wyoming and Colorado. However, against Wyoming, the Aztecs did not appear tired. Center Leonard Allen played 38 minutes and guard Creon Dorsey played 31.

Aztec Coach Smokey Gaines had his team run in Laramie on Wednesday, and it seemed to pay off late in Thursday night’s game.

The Aztecs were fortunate that most of the Wyoming students were on winter break and therefore only 5,363 noisy fans showed up in the 15,000-seat Arena Auditorium.

So, despite shooting only 35.7% from the field, the Aztecs were able to snap a two-game losing streak.

Tonight, they will attempt to make it a two-game winning streak against a 4-6 Air Force team that opened its WAC schedule with a 67-58 loss to Colorado State on Friday night.

The Falcons are coached by Reggie Minton, a longtime assistant coach at Air Force. Minton was the head coach at Dartmouth last year, but when University of San Diego Coach Hank Egan was fired by Air Force at the end of last season, Minton was named to replace him.

Minton’s small club is picked to finish near the bottom of the WAC, but it will have the home-court advantage tonight.

San Diego State lost, 55-43, at Air Force last season, and its three wins at Air Force are by margins of one, two and six points.

If the Aztecs defeat the Falcons and head back to San Diego with a 10-2 record and a plus two advantage, their confidence probably will be as high as the altitude they will be leaving. Aztec Notes

Guard Bobby Owens has the flu and did not accompany the team on this trip. . . . Guard Gary Bottschall of Lakeside and El Capitan High School is on the Air Force junior varsity team. . . . On Thursday afternoon, Coach Smokey Gaines held a meeting with Anthony Watson and Leonard Allen. Both players snapped out of slumps with strong performances against Wyoming. Watson hit 6 of 11 shots and scored 16 points, which included a 12-foot, game-winning jump shot. After scoring just two points and grabbing one rebound in 21 minutes against Michigan State last Saturday, Allen came up with 16 points, 9 rebounds and 5 blocked shots against Wyoming. Allen did not get off to a good start against Wyoming, but he blocked a shot and scored on a power move in a matter of seconds midway through the first half. From that point on, he appeared to be considerably more confident and aggressive. “Sometimes it takes things like that to rebuild a player’s confidence,” Allen said. . . . Other WAC games today: Hawaii at Wyoming, New Mexico at BYU, UTEP at Utah.