The latest brick in San Diego State\u2019s basketball roster rebuild comes from the northwest corner of a Mediterranean island with a picturesque coastline and history that dates to the Neolithic era.<\/p>\n
Luca Vincini ended his season Sunday with pro club Dinamo Sassari on the Italian island of Sardinia and posted a heartfelt message to fans without mentioning his next destination.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, it was revealed: The 6-foot-9 forward who has been a pro for six years and was called up to Italy\u2019s senior national team last fall is an Aztec now.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never easy to write farewell messages, especially for a place that was like home to me and that welcomed me from day one,\u201d Vincini posted in Italian after playing 33 minutes in his final game with Sassari. \u201cThe affection and bonds I have created with people, both around the team and outside, is something I will always carry in my heart and never forget.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow our paths are divided, with the hope that it will be a goodbye and not a farewell. Thanks for everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old Vincini becomes SDSU\u2019s third European pro, joining Croatian wing Luka Skoric from KK Cibona<\/a> and Italian guard David Torresani from Nutribullet Treviso<\/a>.<\/p>\n Treviso and Sassari both played in Italy\u2019s top division this season, but Torresani, who is two years younger, doesn\u2019t know Vincini \u2014 only knows of him.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m happy another Italian is coming to San Diego,\u201d Torresani said. \u201cHe\u2019s for sure experienced, because he was playing pro basketball since he was 17. Of course, he has size and he could fit in great in a system like this. He\u2019s smart, so he can figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n College basketball\u2019s foreign invasion is new to the Aztecs but not to the West Coast. Over the past three seasons, nine of the top 10 teams with the most foreign-born players were in the West, including future Pac-12 brethren Oregon State and Washington State at 11 each.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re playing in the top European leagues, they\u2019re European professionals, but for whatever reason they\u2019re allowed to play college basketball,\u201d Brian Dutcher told fans at the SDSU Coaches Caravan on Monday night in Rancho Penasquitos. \u201cBut if you look what Illinois had on their team this year, it basically was a European pro team. Or you look at Arizona, how many internationals did they have in the starting lineup?<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody has internationals. The key is getting good ones, and that\u2019s what I hope we\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n With England\u2019s Latrell Davis and South Sudan\u2019s Thokbor Majak, that gives the Aztecs five foreign-born players on the 2026-27 roster, and a sixth, forward Tae Simmons, who was born in the States but spent most of his childhood in France.<\/p>\n Vincini helps fill the most glaring void after four of the five bigs from last season\u2019s rotation either ran out of eligibility or ran out of town via the transfer portal: 6-8 Jeremiah Oden (senior), 7-0 Magoon Gwath (DePaul), 6-7 Pharaoh Compton (Oregon) and 6-9 Miles Heide (Virginia Tech).<\/p>\n He fits a similar profile to other European players that Dutcher has pursued: a promising young star who has modest statistics because he comes off the bench on a veteran team in a high-level professional league. Vincini was the only member of Sassari\u2019s rotation under 27 years old, but was respected enough that he was named vice captain.<\/p>\n He averaged 6.5 points and 3.7 rebounds in 18.8 minutes per game for Sassari, which finished last in the 15-team Serie A and was relegated. That usually means most players leave for other clubs as it retools the roster with a smaller payroll and exposure of the second division.<\/p>\n \u201cHe really does a good job sprinting to screens, he rolls hard, he\u2019s got pretty good hands, he finishes around the basket, he\u2019s a very good passer, he really connects the offense,\u201d Dutcher said. \u201cI just think he\u2019s a valuable piece to what we have going now.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd he\u2019s older. He\u2019s been a pro and been on the national team. I watched some clips of him from when he was younger going against (San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembayama), so he\u2019s played on the international scene for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n Vincini was born in Turin, turned pro at 17 and spent two years with Italian second-division club Biella, then two with second-division Juvi Cremona before jumping to Sassari in the Serie A in 2024-25.<\/p>\n He has represented Italy on multiple youth national teams and was one of the youngest call-ups to the senior team in November for games against Iceland and Lithuania. He played only a few minutes, but it was a positive sign that he\u2019s on the radar of a national team that regularly ranks among the best in Europe.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen (national coach Luca) Bianchi called me to tell me the news,\u201d Vincini told Italian media, \u201cI literally jumped around the house. \u2026 The blue jersey, the anthem \u2014 indescribable emotions that I hope to experience again.\u201d<\/p>\n That gives Dutcher 11 players on his rebuilt roster: four returnees, three from the transfer portal, three from Europe plus incoming freshman Zach White. Nine of last season\u2019s 11-man rotation is gone, meaning most (and probably all) of the additions figure to play a major role.<\/p>\n Dutcher said he hopes to add another perimeter player from the transfer portal \u201cby the end of the week.\u201d<\/p>\n The staff now turns it attention to future high school prospects, with major prep recruiting events over the next few weekends. The team begins practice in earnest during the second session of summer school in early July.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can put your head in the sand and say, \u2018I don\u2019t like what it is,\u2019\u201d Dutcher said. \u201cIt is what it is, so get up and go to work the next day. That what (football coach Sean) Lewis does, that\u2019s what I do. There\u2019s no sense dwelling over what\u2019s not coming back. The only thing we can control is what\u2019s coming in, and we\u2019re bringing good pieces in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest brick in San Diego State\u2019s basketball roster rebuild comes from the northwest corner of a Mediterranean…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":791724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1369,1370,3549,7264,18257,62,7289,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-791723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-college-sports","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-sdsu-aztecs","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-top-stories-sdut","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116563256705828557","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}