Miles Byrd scored 18 points and San Diego State upset No. 6 Houston with a 73-70 overtime win in the third-place game at the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas on Saturday afternoon.
Jared Coleman-Jones scored 16 points, Pharaoh Compton scored 13 off the bench and Nick Boyd scored all 12 of his points after halftime for San Diego State (4-2).
Emanuel Sharp scored 23 points and L.J. Cryer scored 21 for Houston (4-3), which lost to No. 9 Alabama in overtime on Tuesday night, the opening night of the tournament.
Both teams traded leads in the first half of overtime before Byrd’s reverse layup gave the Aztecs a 70-67 lead with 1:28 left. Boyd then put San Diego State up five with a driving layup with 43 seconds remaining.
Magoon Gwath made one of two free throws with 12 seconds remaining to extend the lead to 73-70 before Cryer missed a 3-pointer with two seconds left.
Coleman-Jones banked in an off-balance shot with one foot over the 3-point line to cut it to 65-63 with 57 seconds left in regulation. J’Wan Roberts then missed the front end of a 1-and-1 situation and Byrd grabbed an offensive rebound on the other end, was fouled and made both free throws to tie it at 65 with 13 seconds left.
San Diego State scored the first six points of the game and the Cougars didn’t put points on the board until Joseph Tugler made a layup with 15:24 left in the half.
The Aztecs stayed ahead until Houston went on a 13-0 run to move ahead 20-12 with 6:17 left in the first half.
Sharp scored the first 10 points in the run, seven on free throws, before Cryer capped it with a 3-pointer.
San Diego State managed to cut the deficit to three on two occasions before Houston took a 30-25 lead into the break.
Houston then scored the first six points of the second half to take its biggest lead of the game at 36-25.
Coleman-Jones tried to spark a rally by scoring four straight points for the Aztecs, but another 3-pointer by Cryer extended the lead back to double digits.
Byrd hit a 3 with 11:44 remaining to cut the deficit to four, but Houston scored five straight points.
Boyd cut it to 54-52 with 7:40 left after sinking 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions.
–Field Level Media
