WHO WILL FILL AZTECS’ NEXT CLASS?
SDSU’s new stadium can be used during recruiting process
“I’m really looking for a school where the fans are so passionate about it, and they want to win so bad.” Brady Dunlap • Harvard-Westlake senior wing
College football season starts in a few weeks, which means basketball recruiting season does, too.
Most high school prospects take official visits when students return to campus for fall semester, and most visits are conveniently arranged around home football games to best display school spirit. So you better believe San Diego State will take full advantage of its glistening $310 million new stadium in Mission Valley, particularly for the Sept. 3 opener against Arizona on national TV.
The Aztecs have two other advantages. There is increasing talk they might soon join the Wildcats in the
Pac-12 as the leading expansion candidate with the 2024 departures of USC and UCLA. And they are expected to be ranked in the basketball preseason top 25.
That said, high school recruiting isn’t what it used to be with inflated NIL payments and relaxed transfer regulations. The more impactful player pool, at least on a team’s immediate future, comes in the spring when 1,000-plus members of Division I rosters peer over the fence at greener grass and enter the transfer portal.
SDSU coach Brian Dutcher and his staff, which have had transfer success matched by few other programs, could easily wait until April and annually reload in the portal. They haven’t, Dutcher says, because he believes a program’s culture and identity are set by fouryear players.
So they get on planes and sit in steamy gyms all summer, watching rising juniors and seniors on the sneaker circuit in hopes of finding what they call “program guys” who won’t bolt after a season or two. The 2022-23 roster has four newcomers — two incoming freshmen, two via the portal.
Expect a similar mix for next season, with at least five scholarships available and possibly more. Look for two or three prep prospects who commit in the fall, and two or three transfers in the spring.
The Aztecs are never overly transparent about their recruiting preferences, but they appear to be focusing on three primary targets, not counting a couple highprofile, swing-for-the-fences prospects who may not announce a decision until spring.
The three:
BJ Davis, 6-foot-1 guard, Modesto Christian High
The quintessential SDSU player, with a chip on his shoulder from being under the radar for much of his career. But he’s under the radar no more after a breakout summer that elevated him to a three-star prospect and garnered numerous Div. I offers, mostly in the West. He expected to visit in midSeptember, with the biggest competitors to the Aztecs
being Utah, Saint Mary’s, Washington State and Drake.
247 Sports describes Davis as “a quick and skilled guard who is talented with the ball.” His ability to score at all three levels makes him more of a combo than a passfirst point. He’s also a committed
defender, something else that fits the SDSU mold.
“Being a nobody a few years ago to adding a few offers to my name feels good,” Davis told 247 Sports earlier this summer. “It pushes me even harder to see what I can do.”
Brady Dunlap, 6-7 wing, Harvard-Westlake (Los Angeles)
A big guard with a sweet perimeter stroke, high
basketball IQ and an obsession with winning from a Southern California private school. Sound familiar?
Dunlap has drawn favorable comparisons to Jordan Schakel for his 3-point range and cerebral approach to the game. His father is Jeff Dunlap, a respected college assistant who worked with Mark Gottfried at North Carolina State and CSUN.
“I want a culture that’s all about winning,” Dunlap told On3.com. “I’m really looking for a school where the fans are so passionate about it, and they want to win so bad.”
He’s rated a four-star prospect by the major recruiting services, currently ranked No. 72 nationally by 247 Sports and 77th by ESPN. He has high major offers from the Big Ten (Illinois, Minnesota), Big East (Xavier, Providence) and Pac-12 (USC, Colorado), but the leaders appear to be SDSU and Colorado. He’s expected to visit Sept. 3.
Miles Heide, 6-9 post, Mount Si High (Snoqualmie, Wash.)
Folks in California might not have heard of Mount Si, but the basketball community in Washington knows all about the Wildcats as perennial state title contenders in
the large-school division. Mount Si went 25-1 last season, the lone loss coming in overtime in the state championship.
The bulk of the team has been together since elementary school, and Heide is one of several starters getting Div. I interest. His list continues to grow after averaging 21.5 points and 19.5 rebounds in the Section 7 high school event in Arizona in June, and the Aztecs are now up against Iowa, Utah, Washington State and Oregon State (where his 6-11 father and 6-4 mother played in the late 1990s). Miles’ 6-7 older sister, Seda, plays at Cal.
It’s no mystery that the Aztecs are in the market for a big with four-year starter Nathan Mensah in his final season. Heide might not be the same rim-protecting force, but he’s more polished offensively at this age, able to score with both hands and knock down the occasional 3-pointer. He also possesses an advanced understanding of when, where and how to set effective balls screens. And at 225 pounds, he won’t have to spend a year or two putting on weight. Others to keep an eye on: Mikey Williams, 6-3 guard, San Ysidro High
It’s hard to know what a kid with a multiyear Puma endorsement deal and 3.7 million Instagram followers will do for college, if indeed he ends up there. The deals with Puma and other companies may preclude that, especially considering no current Div. I schools wear Puma. (SDSU requires athletes to wear Nike’s Air Jordans.)
It’s also hard to know how he has progressed as a player since being ranked the No. 1 prospect for the class of 2023 as a ninth-grader. He played sparingly in high school last season in North Carolina, skipped almost the entire summer circuit and is transferring back to San Ysidro. He included SDSU on a list of 10 finalists, but that was two years ago and his father, former Sweetwater High star Mahlon Williams, admits much has changed. He has taken an unofficial visit to USC and an official visit to Kansas, but there’s no word of any others scheduled.
Most people just assume he’ll bypass college, spending a year in a foreign pro league or with the G League Ignite, a development team based in Nevada for talented teenagers waiting to be ageeligible for the NBA Draft.
Dennis Evans III, 7-1 center, Hillcrest High (Riverside)
The Aztecs were among the first programs to recruit him and remain in the hunt for the left-handed shot swatter with a 7-7 wingspan. But now schools like Kansas and Kentucky are, too, and 247 Sports and Rivals have both elevated him into the top 20 nationally for the class of 2023. Either way, he is expected to wait until after his high school season to make a college decision, which figures to only attract more interest.
Ashton Hardaway, 6-7 forward, Sierra Canyon High (Chatsworth)
The son of Memphis coach (and four-time NBA All-Star) Penny Hardaway, he recently transferred from Duncanville High in Texas to Sierra Canyon, where he’ll team with Bronny James (LeBron’s son) and play an international schedule that includes games in Paris and London. He began his career at Bishop Montgomery in Torrance, Schakel’s alma mater, so he has Southern California roots. He also has offers from USC, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State.