June 29, 2016
SAN DIEGO -
2016-17 SDSU Men's Basketball Schedule (as of 6/29)
San Diego State men's basketball and Arizona State will begin a home-and-home series this season with the Sun Devils visiting Viejas Arena on Saturday, Dec. 10. The Aztecs will return the game in 2017-18 by traveling to Tempe, Arizona with the date to be determined.
This year's game, which does not have a start time yet, will be the first match-up between the schools since 2009-10. The Aztecs were edged on the road in that game, 55-52, a season after falling at home to the No. 15/15 Sun Devils, 59-52.
This is the third home-and-home series San Diego State has scheduled with Arizona State. The first came during Steve Fisher's first two campaigns on The Mesa and resulted in a 1-1 showing. The other featured the aforementioned games that were separated by a combined 10 points.
Since that loss at ASU on Dec. 19, 2009, the Aztecs have gone 186-52 for a winning percentage of .782, which is the sixth-best nationally behind Kansas, Gonzaga, Duke, Kentucky and Wichita State. San Diego State later won the Mountain West championship that season and advanced to the first of six straight NCAA tournaments.
Fast forward to this December and SDSU will look to close the gap in the all-time series, one in which it trails the Sun Devils, 16-10. The Aztecs, however, hold an 8-5 edge in games played in America's Finest City.
The series with Arizona State comes a day after San Diego State announced a home-and-home set with Gonzaga, which will begin this season in Spokane (Nov. 14) and finish in San Diego during the 2017-18 campaign (Dec. 21, 2017).
The balance of SDSU's non-conference schedule is not complete, but a handful of the Aztecs' games have been released. Not including Gonzaga, San Diego State will travel to Loyola (Ill.) on Dec. 3 for the Mountain West-Missouri Valley Challenge, to Grand Canyon on Dec. 7, and to the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic (Dec. 22-25) where it joins a field of Hawai'i, Illinois State, San Francisco, Southern Miss, Stephen F. Austin, Tulsa and Utah.
San Diego State enters 2016-17 having won an average of 26 games the last 11 seasons, all of which have ended in postseason tournament appearances. The Aztecs, who have won a Mountain West-high 10 conference titles, will enter the upcoming campaign as the three-time defending regular-season champions. In the last three years alone, SDSU has averaged 28.7 victories, including a 28-win effort in 2015-16.