Matt Bradley hopes country saw San Diego State's resiliency

A lot of players in college hoops talk about their team playing hard and selflessly, but few of them back it up like Matt Bradley and the 2023 San Diego State basketball team. The Aztecs are most definitely tough. They’re all juniors and seniors, several of which have played for SDSU their entire careers — and throughout those careers, over the last four years, the Aztecs have finished top-25 in defensive efficiency each season. They’re old, they’re physical, and they defend their tails off.

Brian Dutcher’s team is also deep. They have nine legitimate contributors with 3+ years of experience and needed plays from each of them during their stampede through the South Region — especially when their star, Bradley, struggled. But he doesn’t care what his own numbers were so long as SDSU got the wins, and they did. Now, he’s hoping the country will believe in the Aztecs after the resiliency they showed en route to Houston.

“I hope people of America, everybody watching San Diego State, sees how resilient we are,” Bradley said in media availability this week. “We came through a lot of adversity, having down points in the season. Losing games we should have won. Having some weird tough wins that people didn’t necessarily like. And you never know what type of team we’re going to be throughout the season. We stuck to the game plan, we stuck to each other. We stuck to the coach’s plan, and we just stayed resilient and we didn’t let the outside noise really bother us.

“And we’re not a bunch of five stars up here,” Bradley added. “We’re just a bunch of hard-nosed dudes that like to play basketball and play for each other and win games. The Final Four teams that are right here, looks like that’s the makeup of a lot of these teams. I hope they see that.”

Starting with Matt Bradley, San Diego State is also a completely unselfish squad. Bradley was a volume scorer at California before transferring to SDSU, and in his first year there he averaged a hair under 17 points a game. However, after returning for his senior year and second season with the Aztecs, Bradley’s only scoring 12.5 points per game, opening up opportunities for other options.

Furthermore, he had a really tough weekend in Louisville in the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 rounds, where he scored just eight total points on 3-17 shooting in games against Alabama and Creighton. Meanwhile, fellow guards Darrion Tramell and Lamont Butler stepped up and Coach Dutcher even sat Bradley for a lot of the second half vs. the Blue Jays as SDSU clinched their Final Four berth. But without Bradley’s willingness to let those guys eat into some of his own shots throughout the year, perhaps they wouldn’t have been as ready when their numbers were called after Bradley went cold.

Again, a lot of players talk about being unselfish, but few have sacrificed more for their team’s success than San Diego State’s Matt Bradley. Who cares if he was downright terrible on offense last week — the strength of this Aztec team is they have other veterans ready to step up when Bradley (or whoever) has an off night. Now, Bradley and SDSU will tip off in the Final Four with a clean slate on Saturday.