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SDSU’s Brian Dutcher: “The realignment is here”
Brian Dutcher shares his thoughts on the ongoing realignment of the NCAA.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — With San Diego State playing Creighton in the school’s first-ever Elite Eight NCAA tournament game Sunday, coach Brian Dutcher said opportunities for the school’s basketball program and athletic department with both USC and UCLA are on the way big Ten next season.
“The realignment is here,” Dutcher said. “So everyone is just waiting for the next shoe to fall. Whether that’s the Big Ten or the Pac-12 or the Big 12 or ACC. There will be more realignment.”
With UCLA and USC exiting the Pac-12 and soon playing the vast majority of their conference games thousands of miles away, San Diego State plans to anchor itself in Southern California as a sensible regional option. The Aztecs played their opening weekend of the NCAA tournament more than 2,000 miles away in Orlando, Fla., and Dutcher said that trip gave him insight into the travel challenges basketball’s new Big Ten schools will face.
“Although [our flight] was a charter i thought, gosh do the guys have to do that every two weeks to play a basketball game? It would be exhausting,” he said. “It will be a real challenge to be at your best in this type of travel. I wish them the best, but this is more journey than I would ever wish on anyone.”
With Pac-12 expected to get clarity on its next television deal in the coming weeks, the possibility that the conference could add programs once that deal is finalized has been looming for months. San Diego State remains at the forefront of this conversation thanks to the school’s location, a strong winning streak in both soccer and men’s basketball, and solid academics.
San Diego State athletic director John David Wicker said that whether it’s Mountain West or Pac-12, the program can sell regional travel to recruits. He sees the extensive travel USC and UCLA have to make for league games as a potential recruiting advantage. When the Aztecs flew to Orlando for the opening weekend, he said he mentioned after the 2.5 hour trip that they were only halfway to many of the Big Ten schools.
“I think that’s going to be huge for us,” Wicker said. “Maybe it doesn’t affect football because football isn’t that much travel, but everything else, that’s a lot of travel. I think it helps.”
Dutcher added, “I just feel like you should play regionally. It’s better for the kids. It’s easier to be a student athlete than just an athlete.”
Dutcher was the head coach at San Diego State for six seasons and has been a staff member since 1999. During that time, he has seen the program grow into a professional basketball team in a city that is number 8 by population in the country.
The turning point in catching City’s attention came in 2010-11 when Kawhi Leonard was a sophomore in a team that won 34-3. Prior to this season, the school’s best shot at making the Final Four might have come in 2019-20, when it finished 30-2 and was in line for a No. 1 seed before the pandemic canceled the NCAA tournament.
The school’s football program has a 7-4 record against Pac-12 schools since 2016 and has made bowl games for the past 12 full seasons. In five of the last seven full seasons, San Diego State has won double-digit football games. As of 2010, San Diego State has the highest combined win rate of any Division I school in soccer and men’s basketball at 73.8%, ahead of Ohio State (72.9%) and Oregon (71.1%).
“I always thought the Pac-12 wouldn’t invite us with UCLA and USC because they would put us on the same footing and we’d be too big a competitor to let them in,” Dutcher said. “Now that they’re gone and Southern California has a really good team in San Diego, I think we would want a lot of conferences for the Pac-12, the Big 12.”
The state of San Diego has been working toward this moment. The school opened Snapdragon Stadium for soccer this fall, which cost $310 million and is considered a hallmark of its facility projects. The environment of the Viejas Arena for basketball on campus has long been recognized as one of the most intense and dynamic in the country. The combination of the market, success and landscape uncertainty has made San Diego state’s leap into a power conference inevitable, with time being the emerging variable.
“We will be ready to attend a Power 5 conference if we get the opportunity,” Wicker said. “I think basketball goes in with no problems. Football probably needs a little bit of just depth and things like that. But I’m not worried about not being able to go straight in and be competitive.”
Both No. 6 Creighton and No. 5 San Diego State are aiming for their first Final Four appearances Sunday afternoon.