For the past five seasons, San Diego State women’s basketball has depended on forward Kim Villalobos to do a little bit of everything.
Score if needed; rebound; handle the ball; defend; provide size when the team had less of it.
“Kim is a safety blanket for me,” Aztec Head Coach Stacie Terry-Hutson said. “She is a utility knife. That’s who she has been her entire basketball career.”
At 140 games played, Villalobos is two shy of setting a new program high mark.
“It’s crazy to think about,” Villalobos, one of only seven active players in the nation with at least 1,100 points, 700 rebounds, 200 assists, 175 steals and 75 blocks, said, while riding a shuttle bus across campus. “I am grateful I’ve been able to stay healthy.”
The tagline Terry-Hutson gave the team this season is especially fitting for Villalobos, in her final year of college basketball: We over me.
“We say ‘sometimes you, sometimes me, it’s always going to be us,’” Terry-Hutson said. “There is a lot of sacrifice on this team for the greater good over the individuals’ success.”
Senior Adryana Quezada is the teams’ high scorer at just over 11 points per game, with nearly half of the Aztecs points coming from the bench.
At 33 points per outing, the bench is fifth in the nation in scoring.
“Our depth has been our super power,” Terry-Hutson said. “We have a unique unit where the kids coming off the bench are high volume scorers. I have seven or eight kids that could start on this team.”
Adding size to a frequently undersized team has also been a welcomed change.
Cali Clark, a six-foot-three, senior transfer from Colorado State, is currently third in the Mountain West Conference in rebounds and blocks and is fourth in the nation in rebounds per minute.
“Cali is a huge addition at center on defense,” Villalobos said. “A player like Cali helps anywhere.”
“I knew we would be pretty talented,” Terry-Hutson added. “We had a lot returning and some incoming transfers in positions that we needed at point guard and center. I also knew how talented our freshman class is.”
Among the Aztec freshman are county locals Bailey Barnhard, a six-foot-one forward and Naomi Panganiban, who has rotated between starting at point guard and coming off the bench as a high-energy scorer.
“There is some hometown love this year,” Terry-Hutson said. “Our attendance is up and it goes hand in hand with having some local kids on the team that people care about and want to continue to watch.”
After a hot 13-4 start, SDSU is currently 15-7, coming off back-to-back 20-win seasons.
Four-and-five in conference play, the SDSU women haven’t advanced to the NCAA Tournament since 2011.
“The end goal is to win a Mountain West championship,” Panganiban said.
SDSU visits New Mexico this Saturday afternoon (Feb. 1) in its next contest.
…
With zero players entering the transfer portal coming into this season, continuity has been key for the women’s team.
On the men’s side, the deck has been reshuffled. Lamont Butler is gone to Kentucky. Micah Parrish is now a Buckeye and Elijah Saunders is a Cavalier.
In Division I men’s college basketball, 24 months might as well be the lifecycle of the Mayfly.
Leading scorer and Lincoln High product, Miles Byrd and reserve forward Demarshay Johnson Jr. are all that remain from the National Runner-Up team of 2023.
Fresh faces or not, expectations have remained high for head coach Brian Dutcher, who has taken the Aztecs to the NCAA Tournament in five of six tries.
“You pick teams based on what they have returning,” Dutcher said back in October during Mountain West Media Day. “That’s a wise thing to do. We don’t have many returning pieces so people will say they haven’t done anything; they haven’t proven it. Our job is to take all this talent we have accumulated and prove we are a good team.”
Three-months later, at 13-5 and 6-3 in conference, with an early win over seven-ranked Houston, that’s exactly what the Aztecs have done.
“[The Mountain West] is very competitive,” point guard Wayne McKinney III, said before a recent game against conference rival UNLV. “Every game has been close. Every team brings something to the table; every team has something to prove.”
McKinney III, a native of Coronado and Cornado High alum, transferred to SDSU after spending the previous three seasons at USD.
“When I was at USD we were middle pack, lowline,” McKinney III said. “That’s a lot different compared to now, being the team everyone wants to beat in this league with everyone is giving us their best shot.”
The talent is obvious, but with three freshman and three sophomores in the 10-man rotation, inconsistency has been an expected enemy of execution for Dutcher.
“We will find a way to get better and the journey is going to be the journey,” Dutcher said, postgame, following an eight-point loss to UNLV. “Sometimes they play like freshman and sophomores and not juniors and seniors.
“We get too anxious and that’s what young teams do. We don’t play beyond the play and get to a second and third side. Sometimes you have to do that to break a good defense down and we have to get better at that.”
SDSU is back in action Tuesday evening (Jan. 28) when it hosts San Jose State.
TOP CAPTION: SDSU got a game-winning basket from Veronica Sheffey on a layup at the buzzer to beat first place UNLV 59-58 this past Saturday afternoon at Viejas Arena. The win gives the Lady Aztecs an overall record of 15-7 (4-5 Mountain West Conference) heading into action this week. (Photo by Dave Thomas)
