Most college basketball coaches regularly traffic in underpromising and overdelivering.
Not Brian Dutcher.
A year ago, he didn’t pump the brakes on unprecedented preseason hype, more than perhaps any team in school history, despite never having won an NCAA Tournament game as San Diego State’s head coach. He welcomed the expectations, embraced them, inflated them, even.
“We want expectations,” Dutcher, in his seventh year at the Aztecs’ helm, said before practice Friday. “Last year’s success, we’re grateful we had it. But we want expectations. I don’t want to come in here this year and say we’re not going to be as good. I want to believe we’re going to be better. If I don’t believe that, how do we have a chance?
“I like expectations, I like to put expectations on the team. Then we’ll see how the season goes.”
You want expectations? You got ’em.
There’s not much you can do for an encore when you win the Mountain West regular-season title, conference tournament and five games in the NCAA Tournament, then find yourself down five with 5 minutes to go in the national championship game in front of 72,423 fans at Houston’s NRG Stadium and a television audience of 14.7 million.
And now Nathan Mensah is with the Charlotte Hornets’ G-League affiliate, Matt Bradley and Adam Seiko are pros in Germany, Keshad Johnson is at Arizona and Aguek Arop is on your coaching staff.
And a relative scarcity of NIL opportunities limited your ability to replace them with proven veterans.
And the nonconference schedule, by at least one metric, is the toughest in the country.
And your senior guard has been hurt the past month.
And being the preseason favorite in the Mountain West and ranked No. 17 in the Associated Press preseason poll was met with impassive shrugs.
And everyone is coming after you.
“Something we have to understand is the target on our back is not only in our conference now; it’s national,” said Darrion Trammell, whose shoulder issues have kept him out of practice since Oct. 8. “We’ll have more eyes on us, more criticism, and that’s something we have to be ready for.”
That, as much as anything, will define this season: managing expectations, unreasonable and unbridled as they might be?
“I feel like there’s going to be less patience because the expectations are so high,” said guard Lamont Butler, he of the most famous shot in SDSU history in the national semifinal, “but I definitely feel like everyone should be patient. We’re a really good team, but it’s just going to take time.”
Will they be afforded it?
Here are four other questions as Monday’s season opener against Cal State Fullerton approaches:
San Diego State basketball coach Brian Dutcher looks on during an Oct. 2 practice at Viejas Arena.
(K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Can they survive the schedule?
Dutcher has a young bench that needs cultivation, getting it minutes in November and December, letting it play through mistakes, growing confidence and swagger.
The problem: He doesn’t have a schedule conducive to that.
The opening six games: a Cal State Fullerton team that won 20 times last season; at BYU, where the Aztecs are 4-30; Long Beach State, picked to finish second in the Big West; in Las Vegas against No. 23 Saint Mary’s, which beat the Aztecs a year ago; Xavier or Washington, both power conference programs with big, athletic rosters; and a rebuilt Cal team with new coach Mark Madsen and a slew of transfers.
It doesn’t get much easier after that. There are road games at Grand Canyon, UC San Diego at Gonzaga. There are home games against the Pac-12’s Stanford and Big West’s UC Irvine, which would have won at Viejas Arena last year if not for a last-second corner 3 by Micah Parrish.
Not a lot of garbage time available to bloody rookies.
A year ago, the Aztecs had had a nine-man rotation made up of all juniors, seniors, fifth-year seniors and sixth-year seniors. This year: The bench has three little-used sophomores, two true freshmen and a transfer from a lower level.
So what do you do in a one-possession game in the second half? Do you send out the youngsters to get them experience at the risk of damaging your NCAA Tournament resume with a loss? Or do you shorten the bench to win now at the risk of hurting your depth later?
“We’re trying to get everyone else up to speed — the second-year guys who didn’t play a lot of minutes and the new guys — and it’s a challenge, it’s not easy,” Dutcher said. “Hopefully we can teach and win games at the same time, but that’s a hard thing to do.
“You don’t make up for that experience. There’s a learning curve. I remember when Arop and Mensah were young, we’d keep them after practice because they weren’t ready to go. They needed extra time. … (Our) young guys want to be good and they will be good, but how sharp is that learning curve?”
Dutcher paused and added: “That’s what I’m anxious to see.”
Darrion Trammell has been hampered by a shoulder injury.
(K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Can they stay healthy?
Bradley played in all 39 of SDSU’s games last season. So did Butler, Mensah, Johnson, Parrish and Jaedon LeDee. Trammell played in 38. Seiko and Arop played in 37 (and one of those Arop missed was a December game against Division III Occidental in which he could have suited up if needed).
That’s the same Arop who missed nine, eight and 10 games in the previous three seasons.
That’s how ridiculously healthy the Aztecs were.
Injury bug? Players rarely got so much as a sniffle.
The irony was the Aztecs were deep enough that they could have absorbed a major injury to a starter last season, like they did in 2019-20 when Mensah missed the final 19 games and they still went 30-2. This season, they probably can’t.
The nine rotation players last season missed only three of a possible 351 combined games. They could equal that in the first eight days of this season if Trammell doesn’t return before Nov. 14 against Long Beach State.
“You make do as a coach with what you have, and you hope for good health,” Dutcher said, adding the old coaching adage for good measure: “The best ability is availability.”
The projected starters when everyone is available — Trammell, Butler, Waters, Parrish and LeDee — are all in their fourth or fifth seasons of college basketball. That’s not the concern.
Remove Trammell and replace him with sophomore Elijah Saunders, as Dutcher did for the exhibition against Division II Cal State San Marcos, and suddenly no one on the bench played more than 40 minutes in an Aztecs uniform last season.
Said Trammell: “I’m hoping I’ve had my setback for the year.”
San Diego State’s Demarshay Johnson Jr. dunks during Monday’s exhibition game.
(Denis Poroy)
Can the O be better than the D?
The Kenpom.com metric rates a team’s offensive and defensive efficiency using a sophisticated algorithm of statistics. And for 13 straight years, the Aztecs have finished better in the latter than the former, often by a wide margin.
The last time the offense was better was 2009-10, when it ranked 48th nationally compared to 51st for the defense. Since then, their average rankings are 105th and 19th, respectively, and the offense has finished a season in the top 25 only once, at No. 11 with Malachi Flynn in 2019-20. It has finished in top 25 in defense nine times over that same period, including five in the top five.
That could change this season. That should change this season.
“We have a lot of really good scoring pieces,” Butler said. “I feel like we’ll able to be very versatile in that area, really dynamic. Defensively, we won’t have Nate, Keshad and AG (Arop) — all high-level defenders. It’s going to be a little different on that end.”
Mensah was more than just an elite rim protector, the rare center comfortable switching the 1-5 ball screen and covering point guards, a guy who could defend posts on an island without the necessity of a double team. Johnson and Arop were versatile enough to guard all five positions as well, allowing the Aztecs the option of switching screens whenever, wherever.
The defense finished fourth in Div. I last season. The offense was 75th, a significant improvement over 167th from 2021-22. Can it take the next step in 2023-24?
It may take time to stir, but the ingredients are there. Butler and Trammell form one of the nation’s most experienced backcourts. Reese Waters brings a multi-faceted game from USC. Parrish has shown an affinity for taking and making big shots. LeDee, with a newfound 3-point range, is an offensive upgrade from Mensah. Campbell transfer Jay Pal averaged 19.5 points per game in the Big South tournament. Sophomore Miles Byrd can score in bunches in a variety of ways.
So maybe the defense is, say, 50th … and the offense is 40th.
“That would be the hope,” Dutcher said, “to be higher offensively to make up for some of our defensive deficiencies that we may experience this year. I mean, we always play hard on defense. But we’ll see what the learning curve is – a lot of new pieces.”
San Diego State works out at Viejas Arena last month.
(K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Can culture prevail?
The San Diego Padres had Major League Baseball’s third highest payroll and a roster studded with superstars. They failed to make the playoffs.
The San Diego State Aztecs had a roster with no NBA players and no one averaging more than 12.6 points. They reached the national championship game.
It’s a testament to the power of culture, of chemistry, of camaraderie. Of continuity.
Dutcher was asked about it at the Final Four, like it’s a recipe you can whip up in a single offseason.
“People talk about culture,” he answered. “They’re in their third year (as) head coach in a program. Culture is 24 years in one place. That’s where I’ve been. That’s culture.”
It’s their secret sauce, helping explain how they went 16-5 in games that were within two possessions inside five minutes to go, including 9-1 down the stretch when it mattered most. They found ways to win.
They lost a close game at Nevada on Jan. 31, leading with 5½ minutes left and then missing six of their final seven shots. They held a players-only meeting the next day, standing up one by one in the locker room and taking accountability, promising to do better. They went 15-1 in their next 16 games and suddenly were playing for a national championship.
Culture matters.
“The good thing about this team is they want to be taught and they want to get better,” Dutcher said. “They don’t shrug their shoulders and act like we don’t know what we’re talking about. They’re trying to please their coaching staff, and when you do that, you get better as the year goes on.
“Last year, all those games went to the last minute. That’s what it will be again this year. Can we win close games? We’ll be in games, in my opinion. But can we find ways to win them? That determines what kind of year you have.”
