Fisher turns bad hand into full houses

SAN DIEGO — There was a time when they counted attendance at San Diego State basketball games by the wristwatch. Seriously. I remember when a reporter on deadline inquired about how many fans were at a particular game and a university official asked what time it was. He was told 9:23 p.m.

Announced attendance later that evening: 923.

There was a time when the biggest story involving the Aztecs was a downtown news conference held by a player who was threatening a lawsuit if his scholarship wasn’t renewed due to his claim the program was discriminating against him based on his medical condition of lupus.

What a wacky afternoon. There were charts and diagrams and everything. It was a scene.

It’s true in college basketball. You can go from terrible to decent and from decent to good quickly. You can, with a special high school recruit here and a key transfer or two there, rise from the dead in a season or two.

It’s the next step — going from good to great, from competitive to nationally ranked — that is far more difficult to make.

It’s the difference between climbing Mount Charleston or Mount Everest, between landing a date with the shy librarian or the supermodel.

It’s a grind many never complete, a reality many never realize.

What you have then with San Diego State the last decade or so is one of the most impressive turnarounds in college basketball history, a program that in Steve Fisher’s first season as coach won five games and went 0-14 in conference to one that enters tonight’s home game against UNLV at 17-0 and ranked sixth.

One that went from offering a starting lineup some intramural teams would have competed with (or beat) back in 1999 to what Rebels coach Lon Kruger this week described as "the most active, agile big guys inside in the country."

When you know you have arrived: San Diego State on New Year’s Eve afternoon sold out Viejas Arena for a game against Division III Occidental.

Tonight will be the season’s sixth sellout in the 12,414-seat venue. Prior to this year, San Diego State sold out just eight games in the arena’s history.

This is what happens when you mix consistency in a coaching staff with convincing enough good players to believe in a dream that owns few reference points.

Fisher spent his first few seasons selling the past with a national championship ring from Michigan and stories of the Fab Five. He hasn’t had to sell that in a long, long time.

The Aztecs still have yet to win a game in the NCAA Tournament and yet the team UNLV encounters here is the best to ever compete for the school.

But the line (Aztecs -5½) is a curious one and speaks to the theory that UNLV will have every chance to win if it makes shots, if it can combat San Diego State’s rebounding and athletic edge by shooting well on 3s and pressuring enough defensively.

"San Diego State is playing great," Kruger said. "They deserve every bit of their ranking and attention. It’s great for our league."

It’s interesting Kruger mentions the Mountain West because when you envision the coming seasons for basketball — the likes of Utah and Brigham Young gone and Fresno State, UNR and Boise State arriving — you would think the Rebels and Aztecs have every chance along with New Mexico to sit atop the standings annually.

Kruger inherited at UNLV a lifetime’s worth more tradition and history in basketball than Fisher did at San Diego State, but each has built winning programs by opening their doors to high major transfers searching for new beginnings.

It’s a risk-reward strategy that has more times than not paid off for both. The hard part is sustaining success once you reach a level where fans not only expect you to make the NCAAs each March, but win and advance once there.

This is the challenge facing a San Diego State team that tonight will start three seniors and a sophomore in Kawhi Leonard who is destined for the first round of an NBA Draft — that once the supermodel agrees to a date, how do you land a second and third and so on?

Undefeated records and Top 10 rankings are nice, but a program’s legacy is born in the days and weeks following Selection Sunday. In this, San Diego State still has miles to travel. It hasn’t done anything on the sport’s biggest stage.

But there is no denying the growth, the journey to legitimacy, the transformation from terrible to decent to good to great.

"We like the fact that we’re unbeaten," Fisher said. "We like the fact that we’re ranked. But we can’t let it obsess all our thoughts. We’ve embraced it, and I do believe our kids have embraced it the right way."

They are not looking at wristwatches to determine attendance figures. The days of lupus news conferences are over. They sold out a game against Division III Occidental.

An amazing turnaround, for sure.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 2 to 4 p.m. Monday and Thursday on "Monsters of the Midday," FOX Sports Radio 920 AM.