Key Returners:
Miles Byrd, Reese Waters* (missed ‘24-25), BJ Davis, Magoon Gwath
Key Newcomers:
Latrell Davis, Sean Newman, Jr.
Key Losses:
Nick Boyd, Jared Coleman-Jones, Wayne McKinney III
Roster:
Reasons for Optimism:
A personal favorite stat: for 15 straight seasons, at least one team outside of the Power 5 (previously Power 6) conferences has finished the year with a top-10 defensive ranking at KenPom. A spinoff of this stat: if you just want to pick San Diego State to be the representative every year, you would have gotten it right 7 out of 15 attempts. What the Aztecs do is built entirely around defensive toughness, most well-positioned by this lasting image from their 2023 Sweet Sixteen upset of Alabama.
Dutcher’s admission in the middle of that run to the title game - that the Aztecs do defensive drills when they don’t score enough in practice so they can ‘set a mindset’ to win no matter what - sums up the whole project here. SDSU’s worst finish over the last six seasons is 21st, and Dutcher has delivered four top-11 finishes during that run. The figurehead on the defensive end was perhaps Dutcher’s biggest recruiting win: Magoon Gwath, who entered the portal but came back for at least one more year with the Aztecs.
Gwath is a 7-foot freak athlete with a 7’4” wingspan who had the fourth-highest Block% in all of college basketball last year. He also posted the highest blocks per 40 minutes (4.2) in San Diego State history and the fourth-highest in MWC history. (Shoutout to 2014-15 Goodluck Okonoboh of UNLV, the most recent player to beat him.) With Gwath on the court, SDSU’s defense was 9.6 points better per 100 possessions, per CBB Analytics, with opponents shooting just 42.7% on twos and 50.5% at the rim.
I’m always a big fan of any defense that has obvious plus solutions at point, wing, and center. The Aztecs have all three this year, with BJ Davis setting the tone at the point of attack. Davis’s 48 steals were 7th-best in the MWC last year and his Defensive Box Plus-Minus of +4.3 3rd-best. You may remember him from such moments as locking up LJ Cryer for significant stretches of SDSU’s surprise 73-70 win over Houston at Players Era.
But: Davis was not the MVP of that game. Neither was Gwath. The team MVP, and SDSU’s biggest ‘24-25 surprise, was Miles Byrd, who emerged early as the Aztecs’ go-to scorer and driver of the train. His shooting numbers won’t wow you (30.5% 3 career), but he’s simply a highly impactful player; his BPM of +8.7 was second-highest in the MWC behind Nique Clifford last year. At 6’7”, he can get downhill very well, but it’s actually his passing I find most intriguing. His passes in SDSU’s ball screen sets created an opponent-adjusted 1.2 PPP, per Hoop-Explorer.
Byrd is a master on the defensive end, too, where he completed a very rare trinity of fours: +4 DBPM or better, 4% Block% or better, 4% Steal or better. The only other player to do that in ‘24-25 was Vanderbilt’s Chris Manon, and only 19 others have done it since 2007, none in the MWC. While minutes off were somewhat rare, averaging 30 MPG, it’s notable that his On/Off rating of +14.1 was SDSU’s best, with effects being roughly equal for both offense and defense. Byrd should be the odds-on favorite for MWC Player of the Year entering ‘25-26 as the league’s most impactful two-way player by some distance.
SDSU will have some holes to fill elsewhere, but they project to have the most returning minutes, scoring, and talent of any MWC program from a team that was an 11 seed last year. At least two new starters or starter-level players will have to come into play, particularly at the 4, but returning sophomore Pharaoh Compton’s +3.3 DBPM was top 20 amongst all freshmen last year (min. 10 MPG) and tall man Miles Heide (7th in the MWC last year in OREB%) offer plausible and positive solutions. Jeremiah Oden, Charlotte (DNP) via DePaul (2023-24) transfer with previous MWC experience (Wyoming 2020-23, starter his final two years) will battle for time at the 4, too, with reasonable shooting upside (98 career made 3s).
All in all, you have a group that fits Dutcher’s defensive ideals perfectly, one that will smother a lot of offenses and has a path to Actual Real Upside on offense with a couple of leaps. But: could they smother themselves offensively, too, based on personnel?
Causes for Concern:
This one goes in the obvious guesses category for obvious reasons. SDSU’s averages over the last eight seasons are a top-7 defense…and a barely top-100 offense. Even in the 2023 run to the title game, SDSU surpassed the 1 PPP marker just twice (Furman and FAU), having to rely entirely on their amazing defense to deliver. While Byrd can and will help, he’s going to need someone to step up.
As such, a lot of hope rides on the returning shoulders of Reese Waters, who’s back from a foot injury that robbed him of his 2024-25 season. Waters has had runs of efficiency as a third option at both SDSU and USC, and in games in 2023-24 where Waters scored 12 or more points, SDSU went 9-2, including wins over Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s, and Nevada.
Waters is a tremendous free throw shooter (84.2% on 184 career attempts) and can get very hot from three, as evidenced by shooting 46% in ‘21-22 and 43% in SDSU’s first 21 games in ‘23-24...and also go stone-cold, as evidenced by a 29.6% effort in ‘22-23 and a 22.8% run across his most recent 16 games played.
If it’s not Waters, one of two key transfers will really need to step up and find levels of efficiency. Latrell Davis comes over from conference mate San Jose State, where he was probably SJSU’s third-best player but easily its best shooter (39.1% from 3 on 128 attempts). Davis can get downhill fast, but it’s fair to question if he will play defense acceptably enough for Dutcher to keep him on the floor; his DBPM of -1.1 was third-worst amongst MWC starters last year.
The other major get is Sean Newman from Louisiana Tech, the only proven full-time P&R operator on the roster. Newman’s shooting is questionable at best (career 31.8% from 3, 42.8% from 2), and while I can see the vision, as his offensive play style overlaps well with how SDSU used Nick Boyd last year:
He, too, is an awful defender (-1.7 DBPM, third-worst in CUSA).
Is Dutcher willing to sacrifice defense for offense? If so, Newman can create quality kickouts for others and hits rollers downhill very well, while Davis is speedy and can rip it. However, their buy-in on defense is the real bottom line, and given Dutcher’s history, I wouldn’t expect massive contributions from 4-star freshmen Elzie Harrington (very fun on offense but floats a bit on D) and Tae Simmons (undersized-but-powerful PF who likely runs into a minutes wall in a loaded frontcourt). We’ll see.
Unless Gwath, Davis, or a returner like Taj DeGourville (who did have a solid if unspectacular freshman year) takes a serious leap forward, one of these three newbies or semi-newbies has to help Byrd out. Plus, one injury to Newman or BJ Davis could create a shot creation hole that Byrd alone must crawl out of, which would put a ton of pressure on just one guy.
All we’re asking the Aztecs to possess is a top-75 offense - not that tall of an ask! If they can do it, they’d be on track to fill this 20th-place ranking, based on the last five years of KenPom history and based on our expectation of a top-10 defense. It’s not like Dutcher hasn’t done it; he just needs a couple of these question marks to be answered firmly by the time conference play really starts rolling.
Bottom Line:
Well, it’s a Brian Dutcher team: defensively stout, annoying to play against, and an offense that may have to take circuitous routes to finding consistent scoring. The key difference between this and last year? There’s greater depth at play here, and the team will have the highest minutes continuity of anyone in the Mountain West by a good margin. That’s likely going to mean another fabulous defense, an improved-if-still-shaky offense, and a San Diego State side you can pencil into your future bracket as somewhere in the 4-7 seed range.
