SAN DIEGO — D.Z. Akin’s is one of Brian Dutcher’s favorite lunch spots in San Diego, not only because the food is delicious but because, Dutcher says, “I’m usually the youngest person there.” That’s no easy feat considering Dutcher is 63, but while dining there on a recent afternoon, it is clear that Dutcher is also the most popular guy in the joint. “You work miracles,” one woman says as she walks by Dutcher’s table after paying her check. “It was so much fun. And I’m a UCLA girl.”
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A few minutes later, a man approaches and says he’s a pastor from Oklahoma who prayed for Dutcher’s San Diego State Aztecs during the NCAA Tournament, which ended with the first Final Four in school history. “Your prayers were answered, thank goodness,” Dutcher says. Another man tells Dutcher that his mother-in-law is a huge fan, but that when she watches the games the Aztecs tend to lose. He asks if the coach can make a quick video. “Sure, let’s get the phone out,” Dutcher says cheerfully. Then he looks into the camera, points and says, “Charlene, don’t watch our games. You’re not helping us win!”
The adulation provides a delightful seasoning for Dutcher’s two-inch thick Reuben sandwich, although an elderly lady at an adjacent booth is a mite confused. “You must be a very important person,” she says.
“Not usually,” Dutcher replies.
Life has been anything but usual for Dutcher since he and his team returned three-and-a-half weeks ago from Houston, where they came within one game of bringing America’s eighth-largest city its first major sports championship. The party has lasted a while. On the Saturday following the Aztecs’ 76-59 loss to UConn in the title game, thousands of fans poured into Snapdragon Stadium to celebrate their accomplishment. On April 13, the Aztecs were invited to attend a Padres game, where Dutcher and Lamont Butler, the hero of the national semifinal win over Florida Atlantic, threw out the first pitch. Dutcher has lost count of the number of selfies he has posed for and hands he has shaken while walking around campus. For a basketball lifer who has long toiled in obscurity, the good vibrations are well worth devouring. “My standard line has always been, I’m a man of the people — they know me at Home Depot and Costco,” he says. “Now they know me at a few more places.”
And yet, amid all the feting and high-fiving, there has been much work to be done. The lone downside to the deep tourney run is that while Dutcher was preparing for his next game, his competitors were scavenging through the transfer portal. Dutcher was able to make a few recruiting phone calls, but it wasn’t until he returned home that he could really dive in. “We got back on Tuesday, and on Wednesday at 9 a.m. I was in my office,” he says. “I felt like I was two weeks behind.”
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That work has already started to pay off. On April 11, Dutcher got a commitment from Reese Dixon-Waters, a 6-foot-5 senior guard from USC who averaged 9.8 points in 25.4 minutes last season and was named the Pac-12’s Sixth Man of the Year. Dutcher is also actively pursuing Josiah Allick, a 6-8 super senior forward from New Mexico who is also considering Nebraska, Oklahoma and Clemson, among others. Dutcher will look to add another transfer or two in the coming weeks, which will help make up for the loss of three starters as well as 6-7 senior forward Aguek Arop, a valuable Glue Guy who has exhausted his eligibility. Butler and 6-9 senior forward Jaedon LeDee have put their names into the NBA Draft but retained their eligibility. If their decisions are driven by draft status, they are both likely to return, in which case four of the top six scorers will be back. Dutcher is also excited to give two freshmen from last season, 6-7 guard Miles Byrd and 6-8 forward Elijah Saunders, the chance to show what they can do. “I love those guys, but I couldn’t get them on the floor,” Dutcher says.
The upshot of all this is that the winning should go on long after the Final Four party ends. This is, after all, a program that has long established itself as the nation’s top mid-major outfit this side of Gonzaga. Since the 2009-10 season, San Diego State has won 76 percent of its games (fifth-highest in the country) and played in 10 NCAA Tournaments. That doesn’t include 2020, when the Aztecs went 30-2 and were headed for a No. 1 or No. 2 seed when March Madness was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the last 13 years, the Aztecs have won or shared eight Mountain West Conference regular season championships. They could very well enter the 2023-24 season heavily favored to win another. “We’ve proven that we’re not a one-hit wonder,” Dutcher says. “I actually think we could be better next season.”
The run to the Final Four may have been extraordinary, but it was no miracle. Rather, it was the natural culmination of sustained excellence. It also came at a propitious moment given that San Diego State is on the verge of a game-changing move. The Pac-12 is in dire need of expansion due to the decisions of UCLA and USC to move to the Big Ten next summer. SDSU’s addition to the league should be a layup given that it is located in a major city in southern California, has a winning football team that plays in a new stadium, and its basketball program is already more competitive than most of the Pac-12. The only thing holding up the move is the Pac-12’s impending media rights deal, which should be finalized by the end of the summer. San Diego State has also been in discussions with the Big 12, but unless the money to go to that conference is substantially greater, the Pac-12 makes far more sense.
“One or the other is going to happen,” athletic director John David Wicker says. “We’re excited for the opportunity, and we’ve done a lot of work to prepare for that.”
Foremost among those efforts was the building of Snapdragon Stadium, a gleaming, 35,000-seat, $310 million structure that houses the school’s football team as well as the local NWSL and Major League Rugby teams. Under third-year coach Brady Hoke, the Aztecs went 7-6 last season (after going 12-2 the year before) and averaged 29,225 fans per game. Snapdragon has also played host to concerts by Jimmy Buffett, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Coldplay, and the city hopes to add an MLS team later this year. A river park containing housing, retail and research buildings, not to mention more tailgating options, is expected to be completed within the next year or two as well.
What a night 👏 Thank you for your support all season long!#TheTimeIsNow pic.twitter.com/qVZr3ckapv
— San Diego State Men’s Basketball (@Aztec_MBB) April 9, 2023
A move to the Pac-12 would bring a five-to-tenfold increase in revenue. Spending that money will be a welcome challenge. Several years ago, SDSU hired the Huron Consulting Group to devise a growth strategy that would bring the school on par with power conference schools. Wicker sees a lot of those new dollars going to improving facilities and expanding training tables, nutrition and other means of support, but he does not want it to disrupt a model that has clearly worked thus far. For example, Wicker likes that the coaches’ offices across all sports are located inside the Fowler Athletics Center, the four-story, 130,000 square foot facility that opened in the summer of 2001, and that all of the school’s athletes eat and train inside as well. “I have no desire to build a bunch of independent buildings for teams to move into their own separate spaces,” he says. “I want student-athletes seeing each other in the training room and the academic area. I think that gives them a much better college experience.”
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Dutcher likewise recognizes the promise and the peril of moving to a power conference. He has no qualms about whether his program can compete — “We’re a high-major program wherever we’re at,” he says — but that could change if the shift begets a different culture. Dutcher has been an integral part of building that culture, which centers around effort and hard-nosed defense, ever since he arrived in 1999 with Steve Fisher, for whom Dutcher also worked as an assistant at Michigan for nine seasons. Dutcher spent 18 seasons as Fisher’s assistant at SDSU before taking over when Fisher retired in 2017. Three members of his staff have been there for 16 or more years as well. “It’s not easy to build a culture in two or three years,” Dutcher says. “Twenty-four years in one place? That’s culture.”
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Recruiting from the transfer portal can be a dicey proposition, but given that Fisher used multiple transfers to kick-start the program, Dutcher knows how to avoid pitfalls. For example, when he is deciding whether he wants to recruit a player in the portal, Dutcher watches several of that player’s games in full, as opposed to just going through a string of clips he can access on Synergy. “It takes forever, but that’s the only way to see what a guy is really about,” he says. “How hard does he play? Does he give up on plays? What’s his attitude on the court when things don’t go right? Is he scoring when the game is out of hand? You look at Synergy, you can watch every shot he made in two hours, but that doesn’t show you his character.”
By the same token, Dutcher knows that he and the school need to adapt to the changes that have overtaken college sports, from conference realignment to the new rules that allow athletes to profit off their Name, Image and Likenesses. On that front, SDSU is well behind the curve. The school does not have a significant NIL collective for football. The primary collective for men’s and women’s basketball, the MESA Foundation, raised around $350,000 last season and paid roughly $2,000 per month to each scholarship player, regardless of his or her role. Dutcher talks about getting a “San Diego discount” because players naturally want to come to southern California, but at some point, SDSU’s collectives will need to be able pay a lot more in order to remain competitive.
Jeff Smith, the CEO of the MESA Foundation, says he has noticed an increase in engagement since the Final Four, but that has not yet translated into significant donations. He admits that the impending move to the Pac-12 has brought a greater sense of urgency to the foundation’s work. “There are enough stories within our current conference that would suggest we’ve got to ramp up,” Smith says. “The numbers are intimidating. We’re conscious of needing to increase our buy-in from the community so that we’re able to at least provide something that gives athletes who want to be here another reason to stay.”
A move to the Pac-12 should also lead to a substantial pay raise for Dutcher, whose current $1.3 million salary would make him the lowest-paid coach in the league. That would be quite the star turn for a guy who has interviewed for just one head coaching job during his two-plus decades on campus. (It was with another Mountain West school, but he was not offered the position.) When the head coaching job at Minnesota, which is Dutcher’s alma mater and the school where his father Jim coached for 11 years, came open in 2021, the school reached out to Dutcher to set up an interview, but it hired Ben Johnson before that conversation took place. No schools reached out to Dutcher after the NCAA Tournament, and it’s not just because of his $5 million buyout. “I’m 63 years old,” he says. “Schools don’t see me as long-term. They want a young, energetic guy.”
True enough, but there are some places — some restaurants, at least — where 63 is still considered rather young. The Final Four run proved that Dutcher still has plenty of energy which, coupled with the wisdom accrued during his four decades in the business, makes him well-equipped for what lies ahead for his program, his university, and his city. “The one thing I’ve always been able to do is adapt,” he says. “We have a great city. We have a great university. We have great facilities. We have what we need to be successful.”
Things are about to change in a major way for San Diego State. The challenge will be making sure the important stuff stays the same.
(Photo of Brian Dutcher and San Diego State after Elite Eight win over Creighton: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)