If I had to guess it's that this crew left themselves susceptible to the illusion because a proper, attention-to-detail briefing that included what lighting equipment was available and to be used for visually transitioning, approaching, and landing on 28R wasn't accomplished. With a proper briefing, normally both pilots (but if one doesn't, usually the other does and speaks up) stay on the correct page. In this case, however, both seemed to have been not on any page that reads what they should have known about RWY 28R and oblivious to it's details, and therefore let any set of lights that vaguely approximated how a runway should appear fill in the blank.
I fully agree except the most important point has been left out. Runway 28L is NOTAMed as Out of Service. So there will only be Runway 28R available. Both crew members minds now expect only to see one runway.
Similarly had the Tower (or a previous arrival controller) just added runway 28L is out and unlit, expectations would have changed.
But all the holes in the cheese lined up. Including worst circadian time at the end of a long day.