Trey Kell carries San Diego State past New Mexico in Mountain West title game

There is no March setup more exciting than the one which sees two teams meeting for a game where both are fully aware that the winner gets to play in the NCAA Tournament and the loser does not.

These were the stakes on Saturday when fifth-seeded San Diego State took down third-seeded New Mexico in a back and forth 82-75 Mountain West Tournament championship game in Las Vegas.

SDSU led 39-38 at halftime, but a sluggish start to the second half left them trailing the Lobos by six at the under eight timeout. The Aztecs promptly ripped off an 8-0 run in less than a minute, capped off by a 4-point play by Max Montana. A pair of jumpers by Trey Kell turned the run into a 14-2 one that gave San Diego State a degree of control that they wouldn’t relinquish.

It was a dream night for Kell, a senior from San Diego who scored a career-high 28 points on 10 of 16 shooting from the field. Though he entered the postseason averaging 9.6 ppg, Kell scored in double figures in all three Mountain West tourney games. The tournament MVP also dropped 11 points against Nevada and 16 against Fresno State.

For the Aztecs, the win wrapped up both their first conference tournament championship since 2011 and their first trip to the NCAA Tournament since 2015. It’ll also be the first trip to the Big Dance as a head coach for Brian Dutcher. Dutcher, who had been Steve Fisher’s top assistant for every year of Fisher’s career as a head coach, took over the SDSU program after Fisher announced his retirement last April. Fisher was in attendance at the Thomas & Mack Center Saturday evening.

On the flip side, New Mexico came up one win short of finishing off one of the better in-season turnaround stories in college basketball this season. Under first-year head coach Paul Weir — who had previously been at rival New Mexico State — the Lobos began the year a dismal 3-8 with an embarrassing home loss to Tennessee Tech and a pair of defeats at the hands of their arch-rivals from Las Cruces. They bounced back to post a 12-6 record in Mountain West play, and nearly punched the program’s first ticket to the Big Dance since 2014.

The tournament’s unexpected title game was the product of two major surprises in the preceding days. First, second-seeded Boise State was stunned by seventh-seeded Utah State in the quarterfinals on Thursday. A day later, SDSU ravaged regular season champion and top-seeded Nevada, 90-73, in the semifinals. That second upset helped the Mountain West avoid being a one-bid NCAA Tournament league for the third straight year.