SAN DIEGO - On Monday evening at Michelob ULTRA Arena in Las Vegas, San Diego State plays No. 7/6 Michigan in its opening game of the 2025 Player Era Festival. The Aztecs finished with a 2-1 at last year’s inaugural Players Era Festival and had wins against No. 6 Houston and No. 21 Creighton.
OFF THE BOUNCE
The Aztecs and Wolverines are meeting for just the second time in each program’s history. The last meeting was on December 4, 2021, when then No. 24-ranked Michigan defeated SDSU 72-58 at Crisler Arena.
San Diego State brings into the contest, the third best winning percentage in neutral site games since the start of the 2017-18 season: the start of the Brian Dutcher era. (see the box at the bottom of the page)
Brian Dutcher reached the 200-win plateau with a 73-57 victory against Idaho State (11-9), becoming just the third Aztec head coach with at least 200 wins. The other two are Aztec Hall of Fame inductees George Ziegenfuss (1949-69) with 316 wins and Steve Fisher (2000-17) with a program record 386.
In the Brian Dutcher era, his Aztecs have held opponents 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-269) of the games he has coached. Nationally, only Houston (165), Virginia (150) & Liberty (133) have held opponents to 60 points or less more times than SDSU.
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 three games, it is averaging 15.7 turnovers forced, 10.3 steals and 5.3 blocks per game which rank No. 21, No. 34 and No. 39 in the nation, respectively.
Against Troy, Miles Byrd made a half-court shot at the buzzer in regulation to tie the game at 89-89 and force overtime. It was SDSU’s first half-court buzzer beater at the end of regulation to tie or win a game since Brandon Heath made one in an 87-84 victory over Murray State on Nov. 10, 2006.
In making his season debut and going 5-of-5 vs. Troy, Magoon Gwath became just the third Aztec since at least the 1996-97 season to record at least 20 points without missing a field goal (also Aerick Sanders vs. Eastern Washington on Dec. 20, 2003 and Billy White on Feb. 14, 2009 vs. Wyoming).
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. He enters the Players Era Festival shooting 92.3 percent (12-of-13 FG) which ranks No 1 in the nation with a minimum of 10 FG attempts.
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 s 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 157-45 record (77.7 percent) since the start of the 2019-20 campaign. That’s the FOURTH BEST record in the nation, trailing Gonzaga’s 179-30 (85.6 percent), Houston’s 188-32 (85.5 percent) and Duke’s 165-46 (78.2 percent) and ahead of the likes of Kansas’ 158-52 (75.2 percent) and Baylor ‘s 151-50 (75.1 percent) records.
San Diego State owns the SIXTH BEST record in the nation since the start of the 2005-06 campaign, 505-181 (.736), and is 87-46 (.654) in neutral site contests in that time frame which is the 10th BEST in the nation.