SAN DIEGO - San Diego State returns to its final season in the Mountain West on Tuesday when it travels to San Jose to play the San Jose State Spartans at 7 p.m. PT at Provident Credit Union Event Center in San Jose.
OFF THE BOUNCE
The Aztecs and Spartans are meeting for the 87th time, with SDSU holding a 51-35 advantage in the series and riding a 15-game win streak against the Bay Area foe, regardless of location.
This will be the Aztecs and Spartans final regular season meeting as members of the Mountain West with SDSU bringing in a 21-1 record against SJSU in the MW era.
Head men’s basketball coach Brian Dutcher has never coached a team which lost to San Jose State in his eight seasons in the top seat.
In games played in San Jose in the Dutcher era (since the start of the 2017-18 season), his teams are 5-0 and have outscored the Spartans by an average of 7.8 points per game, but in each of the last two meetings in the Event Center the winning margin has been trimmed to 3.0 points.
With its win over Whittier on December 22, the Aztecs are 43-6 in their last 49 games immediately following a loss. In situations where a loss is followed immediately by a home game, San Diego State has won 41 of its last 42.
San Diego State’s 121 points scored against Whittier are the fourth most in a game in its Division I era (since the start of the 1970-71 season) and the fifth highest point total in program history. The single game record for points by an Aztec team is 140 vs. Chapman on January 15, 1953.
In its last three games, San Diego State has gotten assists on 60-of-96 field goals (62.5 percent).
For a program known for its defense, the 2025-26 Aztecs are filling it up on the offensive end of the floor. The team is averaging 82.0 points per game through 11 contests. SDSU’s best scoring team as a Division I program was its 1970-71 team, its first at the Division I level, which averaged 86.9 points per game. San Diego State, in its Division I history, has had five seasons where it’s scored at an 80-plus point per game clip. The program’s best scoring year in the Mountain West era was the 2017-18 squad, Brian Dutcher’s first leading the program, which averaged 77.1 points per game.
SDSU ranks No. 3 in the nation with 43.0 bench points per game and has totaled at least 40 bench points in six of the last seven games and in 7-of-11 games this season, which included an astounding 69 bench points versus Whittier College (12-22-25).
San Diego State ranks No. 2 in percentage of bench points vs. total points among the top 10 bench scoring teams in the nation.
In the last four games, the Aztec bench has scored 57.1 percent of the team’s total points (236-of-413) and BJ Davis is responsible for 26.3 percent of those points (62-of-236).
San Diego State is 1-of-3 programs in the nation with at least seven games in which its bench has scored at least 40 points and in which no more than one of those games were against non-Division I opponents.
The Aztecs bench totaled 59 points in its 77-66 win over Utah Valley. The 59 bench points are its highest against a Division I opponent since totaling 57 at Air Force (1-22-20) & the most for a Mountain West team, against a Division I opponent, since December 16, 2018.
San Diego State’s 76.6 percent of bench points-to-total points against Utah Valley is the ninth highest in a Division I game since at least the start of the 1996-97 season.
BJ Davis leads the Aztecs in scoring (11.6 ppg) without the benefit of a start. Among those who have played no more than 225 minutes without a start, Davis ranks No. 1 in the nation in points per game off the bench.
Its game against Oregon at the Players Era Festival marked the second time since the start of the 1999-00 season, that the SDSU was successful on at least 65.0 percent of its field goal attempts against a Division I opponent, bettered only by a 69.6 percent (48-of-69) effort against Campbell on December 12, 2006, in a 119-82 victory. The Aztecs shot over 65.0 percent in each half; 69.0 percent (20-of-29) in the first half and 65.5 percent (19-of-29) in the second half.
Freshman Elzie Harrington earned his first start in his sixth game as an Aztec, which is the fewest games for a freshman to crack the starting line up since Jeremy Hemsley started each of the first 25 games of the 2015-16 season.
Under Brian Dutcher, the Aztecs have held opponents to 60 points or less 121 times and have won 114 of those games (114-7, 94.2 percent). Overall, Dutcher’s Aztecs have held their opponent to 60 or fewer points in 43.8 percent (121-of-276) of the games he has coached.
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.
Brian Dutcher reached the 200-win plateau with a 73-57 victory against Idaho State (11-9-25), becoming 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.
San Diego State owns a 162-48 record (77.1 percent) since the start of the 2019-20 campaign, which is the FOURTH BEST record in the nation. SDSU trails Gonzaga at 186-31 (85.7 percent), Houston at 194-33 (85.5 percent) and Duke at 170-47 (78.3 percent) and is ahead of the likes of Kansas 165-53 (75.7 percent) and Connecticut 161-53 (75.2 percent).
San Diego State owns the SIXTH BEST record in the nation since the start of the 2005-06 campaign, 510-184 (.735), and since the start of the 2009-10 season is 113-71 (.614) in away games in that time frame which is the NINTH BEST in the nation.
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).