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San Diego State tops Air Force hoops team

AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. — Malcolm Thomas and Kawhi Leonard each scored 18 points as San Diego State defeated Air Force 61-42 Saturday night.

The Aztecs (22-8, 11-5 Mountain West) finished the regular season by winning six of seven, and they beat the Falcons (9-20, 1-15) for the fifth consecutive time.

Despite San Diego State’s second consecutive season with 11 conference wins, coach Steve Fisher isn’t sure his team has sealed an NCAA tournament berth just yet.

“We better win a few more,” Fisher said. “We’ve got a good team, but there are a lot of good teams out there. We’re hopeful that we’ll go to Vegas [for the Mountain West Conference tournament], win three games and take all the doubt out of it. This is a really good league with, in my opinion, four NCAA-deserving teams. I told our players, just win the next one and eventually, you will wake up and you’re in.”

Air Force scored a season low while losing its ninth consecutive game. It was the Falcons’ 15th loss in 16 games.

“We weren’t able to get over the hump,” Air Force coach Jeff Reynolds said. “I thought the kids played really hard and the effort of the kids coming off the bench was really good. It was really difficult for our players to change gears tonight, but you’ve got to give credit to San Diego State because they forced us to do that.”

Mike McLain led the Falcons with 10 points. Air Force’s leading scorer, senior Grant Parker, was held to four points on 2-of-10 shooting in his final home game.

San Diego State will be the No. 4 seed in the Mountain West Conference tournament and will play Colorado State in the quarterfinals Thursday. The Aztecs won both regular-season games against the Rams.

Air Force, the No. 9 seed, will play Wyoming on Wednesday in the first round. Those teams split two regular-season games, with each winning at home.

Air Force cut the lead to nine on two separate occasions midway through the second half, but the Aztecs used a 9-0 run to pull away. San Diego State shot 57.9 percent from the field, including 65 percent in the second half.

“They’re a very good team, and we had some good looks that just didn’t go down,” McLain said. “I thought we had a great game plan, but we just didn’t execute it as well as we would have liked.”

San Diego State swarmed Air Force in the first half, holding the Falcons to 25 percent shooting and a season-low 14 points. The Aztecs shot 50 percent from the field and led 27-14 at the break.