Posted by Graham Hays
SAN DIEGO -- San Diego State coach Beth Burns said she apologized to Utah coach Elaine Elliott before Wednesday's game for the chilly weather that greeted the visiting Utes. After all, it was on the wrong side of 60. Having come from Salt Lake City, where the temperature at tip-off was in the 20s, Elliott told her not to rub it in.
This is why it has never been entirely clear to me why San Diego State doesn't win every championship in every sport. All right, maybe not skiing, but everything else.
You wake up in the middle of summer to go play pickup ball, and it's 78 degrees with scarcely a hint of humidity. You wake up in the middle of winter for practice … and it's 66 degrees on an average February day. You could recruit Bobby Flay to make salads in a vegan restaurant with weather like that.
So perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that the Aztecs knocked Utah from the ranks of the unbeaten in the Mountain West with a 55-49 win at Cox Arena on Wednesday night and, in so doing, cut the gap between themselves and the Utes to a single game in the standings.
Except that after the past two decades, it's pretty clear that Burns -- and not one of the most livable cities in the country -- holds the key to hardwood success here.
Not only was the women's basketball team not winning everything when Burns returned for her second stint on the bench in 2005, it was barely winning anything at all. After her initial departure following the 1996-97 season, in which her team went 23-7, the program suffered through eight consecutive losing seasons. And to get it moving in the right direction again, she first had to find bottom.
After leaving her job as strength and conditioning coach at Stanford, Burns watched as the Aztecs posted a 3-24 overall record and 0-16 mark in the Mountain West in 2005-06, both record levels of futility for the program.
But the next season brought quadruple the overall wins, including five league victories. Last season, the Aztecs posted their first winning record in more than a decade at 18-12 and came within a game of .500 in conference play. And with Wednesday's win, they've already clinched at least a break-even mark in the Mountain West this season at 8-2.
Four of the Aztecs' final six games will come on the road, so unseating the reigning conference-champion Utes remains an uphill climb (as does holding off a pack of other contenders). But behind 19 points from Paris Johnson and 11 points and seven assists from Quenese Davis, this was the next step.
"If you want to be a champion, you have to beat a champion," Burns said.
Davis, a junior from Sacramento whose younger sister, Coco, followed her to the Aztecs, and Johnson, a sophomore from San Diego, are examples of how quickly their coach was able to re-establish her recruiting reconnections and re-establish San Diego State as a serious destination for the state's hoops elite.
And although Burns professes to love recruiting, it doesn't stop with getting the students to the school. Davis, who her coach said made as many plays for the opposition as her own team as a freshman, has gone from 8.0 turnovers per 40 minutes as a freshman to 6.1 last season and 5.1 this season. Her newfound control was never more evident than on a play in the first half when she and Utah's standout defender Kalee Whipple went up simultaneously for a long outlet pass. Showing the best first touch this side of Lionel Messi, Davis caught the ball and put it behind her back before both feet had hit the floor, freeing her to coast in for the layup.
Athleticism like that might be just one of the reasons Burns isn't measuring herself by the mileposts she left behind from her initial tenure or her 151-83 record in those eight seasons.
"It's just so different," Burns said. "Kids are so different, players are so different, technology is so different -- everything is really different. And I think the older you get, the more it's like you enjoy the moment. Like when we beat Texas [in December], we had our hats on backwards -- it was a tournament -- we put our hats on, we jumped around. It was the highest-ranked team this university has ever beaten in women's basketball. What was, was; what is, is great, and what will be, I hope will be better."
And what motivated her to come back to San Diego State in the first place?
"I hadn't been to campus in a while," Burns said of the interview process. "And it's just like -- you know you have your places that are your places? It just felt right."
Women's Basketball
