SAN JOSE, Calif. — What happens when your Friday flight is canceled, you overnight in Newport Beach so you can fly out of Orange County the next morning, then that flight is canceled, you bus part of the traveling party to Ontario for a third different Southwest Airlines flight while the rest bused the 388 miles north, then that flight is delayed, you arrive in San Jose just hours before the game and too late for your shootaround slot, and you get only 24 minutes before tip-off to acclimate to a new arena, lighting, angles and sightlines?

You miss your first six shots.

And 11 of your first 12.

And 16 of your first 18.

And 21 of your first 25.

And … you win?

The No. 23-ranked San Diego State Aztecs figured if they were going to go through all the trouble to reach San Jose’s SAP Center, they might as well get something out of it, which they did with a crazy 71-50 victory against Cal after trailing 10-2 and then leading by as many as 29.

Crazy, because of how they got here. Crazy, because of how they won.

The team that supposedly can’t rebound dominated the boards against statistically one of the nation’s best on the glass. The Golden Bears had outrebounded their opponent in all 11 games this season and entered the day ranked 20th in Division I in the percentage of offensive boards they grabbed off missed shots. (And SDSU ranked 283rdin keeping teams off the offensive boards.)

Final rebound stats: Aztecs 49, Bears 39.

Second-chance points off offensive boards: Aztecs 26, Bears 6.

That helped weather the brick house they were erecting in the first half, not making a 3 until 19 minutes into the game.

Then they adjusted to the rims, and Cal (7-5) really was in trouble.

Like, biiiiiig trouble.

The Aztecs (8-2) missed their first 10 behind the arc. And made 8 of their next 10, all but one coming in a flurry of points early in the second half that turned scary into laugher.

Nick Boyd went scoreless in the first half but finished with 17 points (and four steals) after making five second-half 3s. Miles Byrd and BJ Davis added 12 each. Magoon Gwath had six points, 10 rebounds (six offensive) and three blocks.

There was some question whether they’d even play the game. When fog in San Diego forced the cancellation of their flight to San Jose on Friday, the team bused to Mission Valley for dinner (and to wait out rush hour traffic), then headed to a Newport Beach hotel for the night.

They woke up to more fog, and their 10:30 a.m. flight from Orange County to Oakland was soon canceled as well. The decision was whether to load the entire team on a bus for the seven-hour trip north (with no guarantee they’d make it in time) or look for alternate flights.

They found 18 seats on one at 12:20 p.m. from Ontario to San Jose and quickly sent most of the players and coaches to the Inland Empire. The remainder of the travel party bused north and arrived just minutes before the 7:30 p.m. game in the San Jose Tip-Off event. Because Stanford and Oregon played first, teams in the nightcap were allowed only 24 minutes between games to warm up.

And it wasn’t like this was a Mountain West arena where many members of the roster had previously played. It was SDSU’s first appearance ever in the SAP Center, the home of the NHL’s San Jose Sharks that rarely hosts college basketball games.

Give Brian Dutcher this much. He called it.

After scoring well but struggling mightily on the boards against Cal Baptist on Dec. 11, the Aztecs coach was asked what they’d work on in the 10 days before the Cal game.

“After USD,” Dutcher said of the previous game in which they struggled to score, “it would have been offense. But it seems like that’s all good now. So next game we’ll be bad offensively and rebound the ball and play defense. It’s coaching. Who knows what it’s going to be.”

Prescient words. Sure enough, they were bad offensively for a half but rebounded and played defense.

And that kept them in the game when it seemed like they might never score again. Shooting might not travel well. But defense, the saying goes, does.

Consider this incomprehensible stat:

Midway through the first half, they were shooting 2 of 18 with five turnovers … and trailed by just five.

By halftime, they were still shooting only 28.1% and had 10 turnovers … and led by nine.

That’s because Cal really couldn’t score. The Bears were 5 of 32 overall (15.6%) and 0 of 12 on 3s at intermission.

When these teams met a year ago, Cal coach Mark Madsen exploded at the officials in the second half and got a technical foul that put the Aztecs up 12 with nine minutes left. And that fired up his team, which came roaring back to force overtime after SDSU missed its final 16 shot attempts

The obligatory T from feigned outrage came earlier this year, with 5:18 left in the first half and the Aztecs up five. It didn’t have the same effect, and the Aztecs pulled ahead 25-16 at the half after Miles Byrd made the only 3-pointer by either team in the opening 20 minutes (they were, gulp, a combined 1 of 23).

Notable

Players dispersed after the game for a brief holiday break. They’ll return to campus on Christmas night, practice the next two days and then host Utah State on Dec. 28 (3 p.m. on Fox) in the resumption of the Mountain West season … The officiating crew included Randy Richardson for the fifth time in 10 SDSU games this season. The rest of the crew were West Coast veterans: Mike Reed and Michael Irving … The game was the finale of a two-game series against Cal that was played on neutral courts near each other’s campuses. Last year’s game was at JSerra High in San Juan Capistrano, a 76-67 Aztecs win in OT … Freshman Pharaoh Compton continue to impress but also continued to be in foul trouble, picking up his fourth with 13:14 left … Dutcher went with a 10-man rotation through the meat of the game, including Bay Area native Demarshay Johnson Jr

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