Photo by Ernie Gonzalez
By Matt Weiner (@MattWeiner20) — MBB Beat Reporter
There are enough highlights from the Spartans 71-55 win against the Lobos to build a mini museum.
The main gallery would be centered around Omari Moore becoming the third Spartan to ever record a triple double.
Another dedicated to Ibrahima Diallo, who in his first game back since December was a Greek God around the rim, scoring buckets and creating space for other scorers. He proved that Tony Soprano’s “God isn’t making any more land so buy now” quote is unequivocally false.
One gallery that should be revisited is Trey Anderson’s three with 8:23 left in the game to make the game 58-49.
In hindsight, the basket doesn’t seem to play a huge role as the Spartans still would’ve won by 13 without it. However, in the moment, it felt like the fate of the world depended on it. If Anderson bricked it, a zombie apocalypse would have torn the world to shreds and the fate of the world would be in Brad Pitt’s hands. Suffice to say not that drastic, but also not that far off.
Bare with me here as I barely passed Algebra, but being up by nine instead of six is very important because it took it from a two to a three possession game. More importantly, it curbstomped any hopes the Lobos had of coming back and stunning the Spartans.
From that point on, SJSU outscored UNM 13-6 and had the momentum swing the Spartan way.
SJSU head coach Tim Miles was impressed about Anderson’s situational awareness during the play.
“When he got the ball in the corner there were 20 some seconds left and he passed up an open shot or a drive and he got it back way in the end of the possession and made the three.”
Once again, hindsight clouds the importance of the little victories. In a 16-point victory, the rule of thumb is that anything that takes the same amount of time as Kobayashi to scarf down a couple of hot dogs is inconsequential. It’s 12 seconds we are talking about after all.
That’s besides the point.
Anderson made the highest IQ play available to him and eventually reaped all the benefits of playing team centered basketball. It also has nothing to do with god-given talent or a chiseled frame with a Michael Phelps-like wingspan attached to it.
Heading forward, the goal is to keep this make the next pass mentality going as the Spartans have three games remaining on the schedule for the regular season.
