When Skylar Spencer banked in the free throw, you figured San Diego State might have this.

The team that has confounded all season confounded again Thanksgiving night, closing the first half by missing 17 of 18 shots, falling behind No. 14 Cal by 15 points early in the second … and winning 72-58 in the semifinals of the Continental Tire Las Vegas Invitational. The Aztecs advance to the final Friday night at the Orleans Arena (7:30, Fox Sports 1) against West Virginia, which is ranked 22nd in the USA Today coaches poll.

How they got there, well, where do we start?

There was the dreadful end to the first half followed by the poor start to the second, the 14-0 run that got them back in it, the 2-3 zone that coach Steve Fisher absolutely never plays but did, the out-of-nowhere resurrection of Skylar Spencer and then four straight made free throws by the guy who switched shooting hands to his right after three college seasons of sub-.500 shooting with his left. One of them smacked off the backboard, and in.


It prompted a courtside scribe to quip: “The bank’s open on Thanksgiving. Who knew?”

Spencer swears he called it.

“I called bank,” he said. “If you watch the replay, you’ll hear it.”

Spencer swished the next one to incredibly, improbably, make it 58-50 as the clock ticked inside five minutes. And we all know what that means.


SDSU entered the game having won 148 straight times when leading with five minutes to go. Make it 149.

The score over the final 17 minutes: SDSU 42, the 14th-ranked team in the nation 13.

Wait. Is this the same Aztecs team that five days ago scored 43 points – total – and lost to Little Rock at home?

“That game stings,” said Winston Shepard, who lost his starting job afterward along with Spencer and Malik Pope. “It still stings. It stings me a lot. But we can’t dwell on it. The biggest thing about it, Coach Fisher said, is we can’t let Little Rock beat us twice. We learned from it, we watched the film, we made adjustments, and since then we’ve been a better team.”


Shepard is a big reason why. He came off the bench again (as did Spencer and Pope) and played his rear off again. He didn’t have a point or rebound in the first half after spending most of it sidelined in foul trouble but had another monster second half: 15 points, five rebounds, four assists and – the stat he said he’s most proud of – zero turnovers.

“Listen, man,” Shepard said, “I will sit in the stands and come in the game, I will stand outside and come in the game. It doesn’t matter if I start or come off the bench. Skylar and I coming off the bench shows that no one on this team should have an ego. If that’s how Coach Fish feels he needs to light a fire under me, then I thank him for that.”

It seemed to warm the underside of Spencer, too. His line: a career-high 15 points, 5 of 5 from the field, 5 of 8 from the line.

Said Fisher: “I think he got tired of having people say, ‘Why don’t you play better? Why don’t you play harder? Why can’t you make a basket?’ I know he got tired of me saying (at halftime): ‘(Ivan) Rabb scored 14 points on us, when are we going to guard him?’”


Spencer also credited assistant coach Dave Velasquez, who showed him past video clips of a more aggressive, assertive self.

“That woke me up,” Spencer said. “I wanted to get back to the old me. I wanted to get my groove back.”

No coincidence, then, that Shepard and Spencer subbed in together shortly after the Aztecs trailed 45-30 with 17 minutes to go and ignited the 14-0 run that changed the game, and maybe their season. The 15-point deficit represents the second-largest overcome in an SDSU victory since 1996-97, surpassed only by the epic 16-pointer against New Mexico in 2014.

The common thread: Fisher, the man who never plays zone, played zone in both.


“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Shepard said.

Actually, this was planned. The Aztecs had been quietly working on a 2-3 zone in practice with the intention of waiting until the second half against the Bears to unleash it, when coach Cuonzo Martin and his staff wouldn’t have a 15-minute halftime to make adjustments. The Aztecs first used it coming out of a timeout; they immediately forced a 30-second shot clock violation.

Fisher didn’t stay with it long, but it was enough of a curve ball to keep a high-powered Cal offense unbalanced for the rest of the game.

“I think we started settling on the offensive side of the ball,” Martin said, “really settling on the perimeter instead of pounding the ball inside.”


The Bears (4-1) got 18 points and nine rebounds from the talented Rabb, although four points in the second half. But their other five-star freshman projected as a NBA lottery pick, Jaylen Brown, was in foul trouble all night and managed just seven points on 2 of 8 shooting. Another problem: They got seven points from their bench. The Aztecs got 34.

The Aztecs, of course, also got a banked-in free throw by Spencer and a banked-in jumper by Shepard at the shot-clock buzzer to make it 62-53 and essentially seal Cal’s fate.

“We got a little lucky,” Fisher said. “But sometimes you have to get a little good fortune, and sometimes the harder you play those things seem to happen a little more often.”

West Virginia 67, Richmond 59


Schools separated by 200 miles flew 2,000 to play each other in the early semifinal. The result was expected, just not maybe as close as it was. Richmond got to within three points inside two minutes to go and coaxed a missed 3-pointer from the Mountaineers, only for Devin Williams to grab the offensive rebound and score. The Spiders missed their next four shots, and that was that. The 6-foot-9, 255-pound Williams finished with 23 points and 12 rebounds. Jevon Carter added 13 for the Mountaineers, who were 2 of 13 on 3s.

Notes

The Aztecs get 21 hours to prepare for the chaotic pressure of West Virginia, which, thanks to Fox Sports 1’s TV slots, played its semifinal seven hours before SDSU and Cal … The Aztecs have now defeated an Associated Press Top 25 opponent in eight straight seasons … They also have won 43 straight non-conference games against schools from the state of California. That includes six straight against the Pac-12, four of them away from home … The Bears shot 37.5 percent, the exact same they did in a loss against SDSU in 2010 … Aside from three minutes by Ben Perez and one by D’Erryl Williams, Fisher went with an eight-man rotation …

Zylan Cheatham (13 points, 10 rebounds) had his first career double-double … Freshman Jeremy Hemsley had 14 points and six rebounds in 30 minutes. He had no assists but, importantly, no turnovers (SDSU finished with eight to Cal’s 15) … Dakarai Allen was the minutes leader with 31 … After a 1 of 7 night, Malik Pope is shooting 26.7 percent and averaging 5.3 points … Spencer’s previous career high was 13 points in the win at Kansas two seasons ago … With a 9 p.m. tip on Thanksgiving night on a neutral floor, the crowd was predictably small. But SDSU seemed to have more and louder fans.