Why This SDSU Team Has Me Buying In

Photo Credit: Don De Mars Photography E.V.T.

It almost feels too obvious to say: if you defend and make threes, you win basketball games. But looking back through Brian Dutcher’s tenure at SDSU, that simple idea tells us quite a bit about what separates his best teams from the rest.

The defense is the part I rarely worry about. SDSU has finished with a top-21 KenPom defense in seven consecutive seasons. Even when the offense has struggled, Dutcher has consistently given the Aztecs a defensive floor that keeps them competitive.

The bigger variable has been shooting.

SDSU’s 2019–20 team shot 38.0% from three and won the Mountain West. The 2020–21 team shot 36.9% and won it again. Even the 2022–23 national championship runner-up team, which wasn’t an elite shooting team at 34.8%, paired enough offense with the No. 4 defense in the country to win another conference title.

On the other side, the 2023–24 team shot just 31.5% from three. The defense still finished No. 11 nationally, but SDSU finished fifth in the Mountain West. A year later, the Aztecs shot 33.3%, had the No. 16 defense and finished tied for fourth.

The pattern is even clearer when you look at the gap between SDSU’s best and worst recent shooting seasons. The difference between 38.0% in 2019–20 and 31.5% in 2023–24 is 6.5 percentage points. Over a season with hundreds of three-point attempts, that represents a meaningful difference in offensive efficiency. The 2020–21 team also finished 5.4 percentage points higher than the 2023–24 group, while winning another Mountain West title.

That doesn’t mean three-point percentage perfectly predicts the standings. It clearly doesn’t. But it reinforces something that has become pretty consistent under Dutcher: defense keeps SDSU good; offense determines how good.

That’s why this year’s roster is interesting.

Even removing injured Nick Anderson, the incoming group brings a weighted pre-SDSU three-point percentage of about 35.0%, which ranks fourth among the trackable incoming groups of the Dutcher era. More importantly, there are multiple players entering with legitimate shooting résumés rather than SDSU relying on one obvious floor spacer.

That 35.0% figure also clears the recent team marks that accompanied SDSU’s strongest seasons. It sits roughly 1.7 percentage points above the 2020–21 team’s 33.3% incoming baseline and 0.5 points above the 2019–20 group’s 34.5% mark. Those differences are not guarantees, but they provide useful context: this is not merely a roster with one shooter attached to an otherwise uncertain offensive profile.

Incoming shooting percentage isn’t destiny. The 2019–20 newcomers entered around 34.5% before that team ultimately shot 38.0%. Meanwhile, other highly rated incoming shooting groups haven’t always translated to great team percentages. Roles change, shots change and some guys simply don’t play as much as expected.

There is also a difference between making threes in a previous role and making them in the Mountain West. A player may have been a high-percentage spot-up shooter at one stop but face tougher closeouts, fewer open attempts or a different shot diet at SDSU. That is why the incoming number should be treated as a baseline, not a projection.

Still, as an August indicator, it gives SDSU something recent teams haven’t always had: multiple reasons to believe the shooting could be good enough.

I already trust Dutcher to have the defense ready. Seven straight top-21 KenPom defensive finishes are not a small-sample fluke; they are the clearest evidence of the program’s established identity.

If this roster turns that incoming shooting potential into a team that lives around 35% or better from three, history suggests SDSU’s ceiling becomes considerably higher. Since the 2023–24 team finished at 31.5% and the 2024–25 team finished at 33.3%, even reaching 35.0% would represent a meaningful improvement over the past two seasons.

That’s why I’m bullish on this season.