Malachi Flynn scored 28 points in the second half against No. 19 Iowa. He had 23 points, six rebounds and four assists on the road in altitude at Colorado State. He had 21 points on 7-of-11 shooting against Creighton. He was 10 of 10 from the line against Utah State. He had 10 assists against Long Island, five steals against Cal Poly.

But the junior guard’s most impressive game of the season, maybe of his career, might have come Tuesday night, when he had 18 points, five rebounds, five assists and four steals against Wyoming.

Try doing that after getting food poisoning, throwing up all night and needing two bags of intravenous fluids just to stay upright.

“Ate some bad Mexican food,” Flynn said, shaking his head. “Got a bad burrito.”


That was Monday dinner. He started feeling sick about midnight and still couldn’t keep anything down the following day. He got one IV bag at 1 p.m., then another at 5 p.m. Then suited up for the 8 p.m. tip and somehow played 35 1/2 minutes in the 72-55 win.

“I knew I would try,” Flynn said. “There was nothing that wasn’t going to make me try. It ended up being not too bad once the game started. The (adrenaline) takes over a little bit. The crowd going, that was a huge part. It’s kind of hard to have low energy when the crowd is going like they were.”

Coach Brian Dutcher was impressed, but not surprised.

“Sergio said he looked awful when he saw him that morning,” Dutcher said of Flynn’s first visit to trainer Sergio Ibarra. “He still hadn’t eaten anything, but then he was able to play and he looked great to me. Sometimes as a coach you know what guys are going to push through, and he was definitely one I wasn’t concerned about. I knew if there was any way he could go, he would play and play at a high level.”


The Aguek Arop injury update is that there really isn’t one. He was held out of practice Thursday and scheduled to see an orthopedist later in the day to determine whether he re-injured his right shoulder on Tuesday or merely tweaked it. Dutcher expects to have a better idea of his availability for Sunday afternoon’s game at UNLV by Saturday.

Arop missed five weeks after straining the shoulder on Dec. 4 at Colorado State, then left Tuesday’s game in the second half and didn’t return. This one doesn’t sound as serious, though.

“They think he’s better than originally thought,” Dutcher said. “We’re encouraged, but we’ll wait and see after a day or two what he looks like.”

Lock Up Tour

It’s on the locker-room whiteboard before every game, and it might be on T-shirts soon.


The Lock Up Tour.

KJ Feagin and Adam Seiko coined the term after the 83-52 win against Creighton in the semifinals of the Las Vegas Invitational on Thanksgiving. It stuck and has become part of assistant coach Dave Velasquez’s pregame defensive talk.

The game at UNLV will be “Lock Up Tour: Show No. 21, Stop No. 10” — for the 21st overall game and 10th away from Viejas Arena.

“It’s just a little something we came up with,” Feagin said. “It’s just something that gets us going a little bit.”


Added Velasquez: “It’s something our guys have really rallied behind. It’s something they take pride in, being elite defensively. They’re not a team that says, ‘OK, we’re going to outscore you every game.’ They go into every prep, every practice, every game saying, ‘You’re going to have a hard time scoring against us.’ ”

The Aztecs are rated eighth nationally in defensive efficiency in the Kenpom metric. They rank fourth in Div. I in points allowed (56.8), sixth in 3-point defense (27.3 percent) and seventh in field-goal defense (36.5 percent).

Undefeated

The SDSU bookstore is selling T-shirts saying, “SDSU Basketball: The last undefeated team 2019-20,” with a map of the United States covered in Aztecs red and the school’s logo.

And they are, in NCAA Division I.


Bellarmine University of Louisville was the last undefeated team in Div. II before losing at home in overtime against No. 23 University of Indianapolis on Monday, but four other four-year programs haven’t lost yet. Swarthmore College (Pa.) and Colby College (Maine) are both 16-0 in Div. III, and Georgetown College (Ky.) and Mid-American Christian University (Okla.) remain undefeated in NAIA.

Picture, please

Students returned to campus this week for the start of spring semester at SDSU. When they left, the Aztecs were 11-0 and ranked No. 20 in the Associated Press poll.

Now: 20-0 and No. 4, with the 2,500 available student tickets to home games being claimed in a matter of hours.

Now: They’re rock stars.


“For the first time after being on campus for three years,” junior Matt Mitchell said, “somebody stopped and asked to take a picture with me. That was pretty fun for me.”

