SAN DIEGO – San Diego State men's basketball and the University of California will play a one-off game on December 21 as part of the 2024 San Jose Tip-Off at SAP Center in San Jose, Calif., it was announced on Thursday morning.
The matchup is the return game for a neutral site contest last season, the SoCal Showcase, at The Pavilion in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., a game that the Aztecs won in overtime, 76-67. The Scarlet and Black’s Reese Waters scored a career-high 24 points in the game and grabbed seven rebounds to be named the SoCal Showcase MVP.
December’s matchup will be the 15th in the series with the Aztecs holding a narrow 8-to-6 advantage overall. In neutral site games, SDSU is 3-0 against the Golden Bears having won 72-58 against then No. 14 Cal on November 26, 2015, at the Las Vegas Invitational in Las Vegas, 77-65 on November 21, 2016, at Sacramento's Golden 1 Center and last season’s November 25, overtime win in the inaugural SoCal Showdown. In the last seven meetings, regardless of location, SDSU is 5-2 against California.
Since the start of the 2009-10, San Diego State has the seventh best record in the nation in neutral site games posting a 70-34 (.637) mark. In addition, since the start of the 2010-11 campaign, the Aztecs are 232-37 (.862) in games played in the state of California, and in the Division I history of SDSU men's basketball (since the start of the 1970-71 season), the program is 480-325 (.596) against the other Division I schools in the state.
San Diego State, which has the second-best record in the NCAA Tournament in the last two seasons (7-2), is one of six programs that have played at least 20 neutral site games in the last two seasons. Its 15-6 record (.714) in those games is the third best in the nation trailing only Connecticut (22-1) and Purdue (18-3) and in its last 17 neutral site games the Aztecs are 14-3.
In 2023-24, under first-year head coach Mark Madsen, California won 10 more games than it had the previous season, but in the last two campaigns is 0-8 in neutral site matchups. On August 1, the Golden Bears joined the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), a league whose teams have a 23-14 lead in the all-time series against San Diego State.
Tickets and the broadcast partner for the game and the tip time will be announced at a later date, but fans can register for presale access by visiting https://www.sapcenter.com/events/detail/san-jose-tip-off.