After a summer of practices with five, six, maybe seven guys tops, San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher had 12 scholarship players on the floor together for the first time this week.
That doesn’t mean they’re all cleared to suit up in actual games.
The three European pros on the roster — Croatia’s Luka Skoric, and Italy’s David Torrersani and Luca Vincini — are allowed to practice with the team because, once they enrolled as full-time students for the fall semester, they’re allowed a 45-day window while the NCAA continues to review their cases.
“The NCAA, they’re still certifying fall sports,” Dutcher said. “They’re trying to get everybody on the field for football and soccer and all the other fall sports. I think they’ll get to us shortly, and hopefully we’ll be in a good place and everybody will be eligible and ready to play.”
Is he optimistic?
“I’m hopeful,” Dutcher said. “I don’t want to say optimistic, because you don’t know at the end of the day what it’s going to be. We feel like we have a strong case for all of them to be eligible, or they wouldn’t be here.”
In May, after most European players had committed to U.S. programs, the NCAA distributed a memo indicating it would more strictly enforce regulations limiting high-earning pros from playing college basketball. That compelled a mountain of paperwork from schools to convince the governing body that their Euros did not receive, to use the NCAA’s words, “minimum compensation that exceeds actual and necessary expenses.”
There is an initial decision. If a player isn’t cleared, he can appeal.
SDSU’s European players are still in the first phase of the process.
The three weren’t full-time students during summer school and thus had to work out individually. Returning starter Elzie Harrington was sidelined by offseason leg surgery, and several other players had minor knocks that kept them out as well, reducing summer workouts to 3-on-3 some days.
Harrington has returned to noncontact drills and could be cleared for live action by the end of the month. Latrell Davis, who missed the end of summer workouts with a shoulder problem, returned to limited live drills on Thursday. Samson Mashebinu, a Nigerian forward who recently received his student visa, joined practice for the first time on Tuesday.
That leaves Rice transfer Nick Anderson as the only scholarship player not practicing, and he won’t for a while after tearing his ACL in May.
The Europeans players have already shown flashes of why Dutcher and his staff pivoted from regional or national recruiting to overseas.
The 6-foot-9 Skoric is a versatile wing or 4-man with a deadly 3-point stroke and good handles, a skill set that typically poses matchup nightmares. Torresani is a blazing-quick lead guard who can play off ball screens. And the 6-9 Vincini is an experienced post at a position where the Aztecs lack depth.
“I like them,” Dutcher said. “They’re very good basketball players. They know how to play. They’ve played a lot of basketball over their lives, and that’s translating to us right now. They know what they’re doing on the floor. They’ve been coached, and they’re very good players.
“Obviously, the game is played and called differently here. They’ll have to make an adjustment to what we’re doing. But I haven’t seen that they’re not going to be able to make that adjustment to play the way we like to play.”
Recruiting
The Aztecs had already scheduled visits from four high school seniors. A fifth is coming this weekend: 6-7 forward Davey Harris from Windward School in Los Angeles.
The connection is his coach at Windward — legendary Aztecs guard D.J. Gay, the captain of the 2010-11 team with Kawhi Leonard that went 34-3 and was the first in the school’s Division I history to be nationally ranked.
Harris is rated as a three-star prospect by 247Sports.com with offers from schools like Boise State, UNLV and Washington State. His father, Burt, started at point guard for USC as a true freshman in the mid-1990s.
SDSU has hosted visits from four-star guard Keaundre Morris and 7-foot center Precious Sam. Four-star prospects King Rachal and Lyris Robinson are slated to come next weekend.
Schedule
SDSU’s full nonconference schedule is still a week or two from being formally announced, but most of it has leaked out already. The latest additions: an Oct. 28 exhibition against USC and a Nov. 15 game against New Mexico State, both at Viejas Arena.
The USC exhibition was announced on the Trojans’ website and will mark the return of coach Eric Musselman, a USD alum, to Viejas Arena after four years as coach at Nevada in the Mountain West. It’s the first meeting with a Musselman-coached team since the semifinals of the 2022 Maui Invitational, when he was at Arkansas and the Razorbacks mounted a late rally to win in overtime (followed by some contentious exchanges in the handshake line).
The non-counting exhibition, which is now allowed to have fans, is expected to be part of SDSU’s season-ticket package, unlike last year’s home exhibition against UCLA that was sold as a separate ticket to raise money for athlete revenue-sharing.
The New Mexico State meeting is the first since the 2014 NCAA Tournament, a 73-69 Aztecs win in overtime in Spokane, Wash. The Aggies were coached then by former SDSU assistant Marvin Menzies.
The nonconference schedule currently looks like this:
Oct. 16: at Arizona (exhibition)
Oct. 23: vs. USC (exhibition)
Nov. 4: vs. Cal State Fullerton
Nov. 7: vs. Colorado (at Pechanga Arena)
Nov. 15: vs. New Mexico State
Nov. 24: vs. Iowa State in Las Vegas
Nov. 26: vs. Tennessee/Maryland in Las Vegas
Nov. 27: Players Era 16 in Las Vegas
Dec. 5: vs. UNLV
Dec. 11: vs. Montana State
Dec. 19: vs. BYU in Palm Desert
Dec. 22: vs. LIU
Still to be announced are one more exhibition and four or five more games, at least one of which is expected to be a non-Division I opponent. The Pac-12 has yet to release its 16-game conference schedule that likely will start in early January.