Not even her Air Force coaches knew what they were getting when they recruited Milahnie Perry.

The pleasant surprises keep coming in bunches. And late in games.

Perry scored half of her career-high 28 points in the fourth quarter and overtime, pushing the Falcons past San Diego State 71-63 at Clune Arena on Wednesday in a game that looked like a lost cause early in the second half.

“She was phenomenal in that overtime,” Air Force coach Chris Gobrecht said of Perry, who made 3-of-3 shot attempts en route to eight points in the extra 5 minutes. “She was the reason we won.”

Perry is making a habit of this. On Dec. 9 she scored 15 of her 17 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Falcons (8-7, 1-1 Mountain West) to a win over Northern Colorado. A week later she scored 27 points in a home win over Weber State, with her early onslaught alleviating the need for a late surge.

“I don’t think it’s anything conscious of like, ‘Oh, I’m going to score all my points in the second half,’” said the 5-foot-7 sophomore from Tampa, Fla. “It’s just more about not wanting to lose and just the hunger and drive to win, especially now that it’s conference.”

Perry leads the team with 15.3 points per game, a huge leap from the 7.1 she scored last year as a freshman when even that took the coaching staff by surprise.

“She was better than we thought,” Gobrecht said. “We knew she was a good athlete, had some skills. But she’s so small, we just didn’t envision her being that tough and hanging in there against contact and that sort of thing like she does. That’s something that she has surprised us all with. And she’s competitive. She doesn’t like to lose.”

A loss looked inevitable when the Falcons fell behind by 12 points early in the third quarter Wednesday.

San Diego State (10-5, 1-1), picked fifth in the conference (Air Force was picked seventh) is loaded with experience and the team was surging. The Aztecs had won six in a row, including a win in overtime on Saturday over Colorado State, which was picked second in the Mountain West.

Of the nine players to log double-digit minutes for SDSU, seven were seniors (four in their fifth or sixth year) and another was a junior.

By contrast, of Air Force 71 points, 52 came from freshmen and sophomores.

Junior Madison Smith scored 12 points to go with seven rebounds and freshman Jordyn DeVaughn had 11 for the Falcons, whose challenge is made even greater by the continued absence of point guard Jo Huntimer. Last year’s team MVP could be cleared to make her season debut next week following a knee injury.

But by first leaning on the defense (Air Force had 15 steals vs. four for San Diego State), the Falcons clawed back into the game and then exhausted their sea-level opponents.

“I think the thing that made me the happiest was just to see them tough it out like that,” said Gobrecht, whose teams have won 5 of 6 vs. San Diego State in a series that the Aztecs once dominated by winning 18 of 19. “It’s interesting, because one of the things I talked about in the pregame speech was watching those football (semifinal) games on Monday, and how the two victorious teams had some really rough things happen to them and they just kept plugging away and plugging away.

“That was the point of emphasis, just keep playing, keep playing and let it go. And they did that.”