SAN DIEGO - On Tuesday evening at Steve Fisher Court, San Diego State hosts Troy University in the Trojans third game in five days as part of a four-game seven-day trip through southern California.
OFF THE BOUNCE
The Aztecs and Troy are meeting for the third time with both of the previous two match-ups coming at Viejas Arena. The last meeting was on December 5, 2022 when then No. 22-ranked San Diego State won 60-55.
The game against Troy is the team’s Nike N7 game, honoring Native American and Aboriginal communities. Since its creation in 2009, the Nike N7 Fund has awarded more than $13 million in grants to Native American and Aboriginal communities and organizations, reaching more than 500,000 youths. The N7 Fund supports organizations that provide sport and physical activity programming to youth in these communities.
The Aztecs are looking to move to 3-0 for the fourth time in the nine seasons head coach Brian Dutcher has led the program. In the previous three occasions, San Diego State has gone on to have a winning record and appeared in the NCAA Tournament in two of those seasons Note the 2019-20 team was 3-0, eventually reached 26-0, but the NCAA Tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
San Diego State is looking for its third consecutive win against the current lineup of Sun Belt Conference programs. The last time a Sun Belt Conference program got the better of an Aztec squad was a 43-49 defeat on November 21, 2015, against Little Rock at Viejas Arena.
Brian Dutcher reached the 200-win plateau, becoming just the third Aztec head coach with at least 200 victories. The other two are George Ziegenfuss (1949-69) with 316 wins and Steve Fisher (2000-17) with a program record 386. Both men have been honored with induction into the Aztec Hall of Fame.
San Diego State is 12-0 from the start of last season when it has held its opponent to 60 or fewer points. In the Brian Dutcher era, his Aztecs have held their opponent to 60 points or less 119 times and have won 112 of those games (112-7, 94.1 percent). Overall, Dutcher’s Aztecs have held their opponent to 60 or fewer points in 44.2 percent (119-of-268) of the games he has coached.
San Diego State, which has reached the Mountain West Tournament championship game in seven of the first eight seasons in head coach Brian Dutcher’s tenure, looks to finish its time in the league building on its dominance with an unprecedented 17th Mountain West men’s basketball title. Entering the 2025-26 season, its last as a member of the conference, San Diego State has won nine regular season and seven Mountain West tournament titles, the most of any program that has been a member of the league.
Brian Dutcher is the only San Diego State head men’s basketball coach to accumulate at least 21 wins in each of his first eight seasons and is averaging 24.8 wins per season coming into the 2025-26 campaign.
Standout defensive play is expected at San Diego State and through two games, it is averaging 51.0 points allowed and 20.0 turnovers forced per game which rank No. 2 and No. 7 in the nation, respectively.
Junior guard Miles Byrd finished the Idaho State game with six assists and six steals and is the first Aztec, since at least the start of the 1996-97 season, to have those two stats in a game against a Division I opponent.
Pharaoh Compton scored a career-high 14 points on 7-of-7 shooting in just 11:04 of time on the floor. Compton is the second Aztec under Brian Dutcher to have a game with a perfect field goal percentage on a minimum of 7 attempts (also: Magoon Gwath vs. Nevada on Jan. 25, 2025) and the sixth in the Brian Dutcher/Steve Fisher era.
It’s a small sample size, but through the games of November16, the Aztecs’ defense appears to be in mid-season form, and this is without its anchor Magoon Gwath who has not appeared in a game. SDSU leads the Mountain West in Blocked shots (4.5/g), scoring defense (51.0 ppg), field goal percentage defense (.375), scoring margin (+24.0 ppg) & turnover margin (+6.5/g) and is No. 2 in 3-point field goal percentage (.267) and steals (11.0/g).
With seven boards vs. Long Beach State, Tae Simmons is one of four, 6-6 or shorter, true freshmen who has come off the bench against a Division I opponent this year and grabbed at least seven rebounds.
San Diego State returns 61.9 percent of its minutes from a year ago, according to T-Rank, and those are the second most returning minutes in the nation among teams Torvik ranks in his top 50, behind Purdue (69.7 percent).
With the return of Reese Dixon-Waters in 2025-26, after missing the 2024-25 season, San Diego State returns 76.2 percent of its offensive output compared to 2024-25 (1,671-of-2,194 points).
At the Mountain West Media Day in Las Vegas, by a vote of media members who regularly cover the league, junior guard Miles Byrd and freshman guard Elzie Harrington were named Preseason Mountain West Player of the Year and Preseason Freshman of the Year, respectively. In addition, Reese Dixon-Waters, Magoon Gwath, and Byrd earned inclusion on the Preseason All-Mountain West Team. Byrd was a second-team NABC All-Pacific Division and second team All-Mountain West performer last season and returns as the team’s leading scorer. Dixon-Waters was the team’s second leading scorer in 2023-24 and a 2024 Preseason All-Mountain West selection who missed the entire 2024-25 season. Gwath was last year’s Mountain West Freshman and Defensive Player of the Year, was ranked No. 6 nationally in blocked shots per game (2.62). Harrington was the No. 80 rated player in the nation and is the second straight top 100 signee in as many years.
The Aztecs return three of their four leading scorers from last season: Miles Byrd (12.3 ppg), BJ Davis (9.0 ppg) and Magoon Gwath (8.5 ppg) and will see the return of Reese Dixon-Waters (9.6 ppg in 2023-24) who missed the 2024-25 campaign with a foot injury.
San Diego State owns a 156-44 record (78.0 percent) since the start of the 2019-20 campaign. That’s the THIRD BEST record in the nation, trailing Gonzaga’s 175-30 (85.4 percent), and Houston’s 184-32 (85.2 percent), and ahead of the likes of Duke’s 160-46 (77.7 percent) and Kansas’ 156-50 (75.7 percent) records.
San Diego State owns the SIXTH BEST record in the nation since the start of the 2009-10 campaign, 412-137 (.750), and is 226-29 (.886) in home contests in that time frame which is the SEVENTH BEST in the nation.