Aztecs announce basketball schedule, add Saint Mary’s game

SSDSU's Trey Pulliam (4) dribbles against St. Mary's guard Tommy Kuhse in a 74-49 Aztecs win last season at Cal Poly.

Dec. 17 game against the Gaels in Phoenix adds to an already difficult nonconference schedule

Sept. 16, 2021 10:46 AM PT

San Diego State announced its nonconference basketball schedule Thursday, and the only addition not previously revealed is, yes, another difficult game:

Dec. 17 against Saint Mary’s at Footprint Center in downtown Phoenix, home of the NBA’s Suns.

The Mountain West already seems improved, and now the Aztecs will play six teams in November and December with NCAA NET metrics in the top 106 last season and possibly seven if they face USC in the Wooden Legacy over Thanksgiving.

The plan was to schedule hard, just maybe not that hard.

That’s because talks about the Saint Mary’s game began weeks before the Dec. 4 marquee matchup at Michigan materialized.

Coach Brian Dutcher wasn’t about to turn down a chance to play at Michigan, a No. 1 seed in the 2021 NCAA Tournament and the place where he won a national title in 1989 (and reached the championship game twice more in the 1990s with the Fab Five). And he wasn’t about to back out on the Gaels and coach Randy Bennett.

“It’s probably a little harder schedule that we thought because committed to Saint Mary’s not thinking we were going to get the Dec. 4 game,” said Matt Soria, SDSU’s veteran director of basketball operations who spends months putting together the schedule. “Once we got Saint Mary’s, we thought we were done. But we weren’t going to commit to them and then go back on our word. We don’t work that way. If we say we’re playing a game, we’re playing the game.”

For a program that aspires to build an at-large resume for the NCAA Tournament, nonconference scheduling is a delicate dance involving buy games, home-and-homes, a holiday tournament and local teams, plus breaks for final exams and Christmas. The idea is not to create a gantlet of difficult games without proper preparation or recovery, strategically sprinkling home dates before and after clashes with titans.

Take the Nov. 9 opener against UC Riverside. Typically, the Aztecs play a cupcake at Viejas Arena to start the season and build confidence.

But with a road game in altitude at BYU three days later, they chose a Highlanders team that went 14-8 last season, finished 106^th in both the NET and Kenpom metrics, beat Big West powers UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine, and took USC to overtime before losing.

“That (Nov. 12 BYU) game had been locked in for a while,” Soria said. “Riverside is a good get-into-action game right before we go to Provo. We didn’t want to bring in someone where we win by 60 and not know what we’re all about. They’re a good team, well coached. It will be a good test.”

Then comes a six-day break to prepare for Arizona State, the top draw of an expected seven nonconference home dates. Texas-Arlington is just two days later, which isn’t ideal because of the abbreviated turnaround. But the Mavericks were already headed to the West Coast and the date fit.

Next up is the Wooden Legacy in Anaheim, where the Aztecs open against Georgetown on Thanksgiving night and likely get USC the next day if they win — a pair of NCAA Tournament teams last season.

Michigan is eight days later, but for months Dec. 4 was an open date Soria wasn’t sure they would fill. The Wolverines were supposed to host Kentucky on CBS that afternoon, but Kentucky scratched because it wanted another home game.

“We were trying to find as good an opponent as possible,” Soria said. “We had an SEC team that we were talking to, then a Big 12 team that we thought would happen. None of those happened, and at the last minute we got Michigan.”

The trip to Ann Arbor is sandwiched between home dates against Long Beach State and Cal State Fullerton, teams that had losing records last season and NETs in the mid-200s. Like Riverside and Texas-Arlington, they are “buy” games where SDSU writes a five-figure check (down this year to about $65,000 from $85,000 in pre-pandemic seasons) for an opponent to play once at Viejas Arena. The Aztecs will get just under $100,000 from Michigan.

Then comes a nine-day break for final exams, followed by Saint Mary’s in Phoenix on Dec. 17. The Jerry Colangelo Classic is there the following day, with four college games headlined by Gonzaga against Texas Tech. The promoter had the arena booked for Friday night as well, and the Aztecs and Gaels were looking for a neutral site.

They played last December on a neutral floor at Cal Poly’s Mott Gymnasium in San Luis Obispo, a 74-49 SDSU win.

“Randy and I have the same problem,” Dutcher said. “We’re usually both very good and we have a hard time finding (nonconference) games. When we go into scheduling, we’re not looking to play one another. But at the end of the day, we both need quality competition to give ourselves a shot at an at-large bid. Over the last two years, we’ve come together and said, ‘We have to play.’”

After playing USD for 22 straight seasons, the Aztecs did not renew the series in 2020-21 and won’t again in 2021-22. Instead, they begin a three-year series against UC San Diego, which is in the second season of a four-year transition to Division I.

The first game is Dec. 22 at Viejas Arena. The original plan was to play at RIMAC Arena next year but, at UCSD’s request, that was moved to 2023. Instead, they’ll play again at Viejas in 2022.

“Scheduling is a great challenge, so I never want to say never,” Dutcher said of USD. “Right now, UCSD is slotted in there. It’s a game that I think San Diego will embrace with UCSD making the move to Division I basketball. It gives us a different in-city opponent. Nothing against USD. We felt this game fit better for what we needed at this time.”

The Aztecs can play up to 13 nonconference games (they currently have 11 scheduled) and likely will add one against a non-Div. I opponent at home a few days before the Mountain West opener at UNLV, currently scheduled for Jan. 1. No need to load up with another blockbuster nonconference game.

“This is how you schedule when you have a lot of seniors on the roster that want to play in games like this,” Dutcher said. “You schedule like this when you’ve had good success. We’re up for the challenge. ... Know this. We’ve asked to play everybody. We only can get those who want to play us, and I think we’ve done a good job with this schedule.”