San Diego State Adds 6’11” Big Man, Bear Cherry As First Portal Addition

Play the fight song, the Aztecs have picked up their first transfer portal signing for the 2026-27 season and it is a big one. Jeremiah Bear Cherry from Sacramento State is on his way back down to Southern California where he is originally from.

There’s a lot to recognize from Bear Cherry as he’s more affectionately known. First off the name Cherry should ring a bell from many Aztecs hoops heads like us that remember his older brother Taeshon Cherry. SDSU was hot on his recruitment before he headed to Arizona State and then Grand Canyon.

Little brother Bear has had quite the different baksketball journey. Jeremiah a San Diego native eventually moved to Arizona where he played his high school ball for Saint Mary’s in Phoenix where his Knights won a state 4A title.

Next up was two years in New Mexico Junior College where he averaged about 12 points per game in both his seasons. As a highly sought after JUCO product he then chose UNLV as a member of the Runnin Rebels in the Mountain West Conference.

There in Las Vegas Cherry averaged 9.9 points per game, 5.3 rebounds, 1.5 blocks and hit 62% of his field goals. He played the full season and averaged just about 23 minutes per game. That’s some good run.

But then the NIL money came calling and Cherry was off on his way to be a part of the exciting Hornets program of the Sacramento State basketball program. In California’s state capitol program there he was on his way to averaging nearly 16 points per game and increased starters minutes when he suffered a season ending knee injury just six games into last season.

Sacramento State hasn’t necessarily hit on the successes they’ve aimed for and being a 6’11” 250 pound big man, the market value and opportunities have alowed Cherry the come back home and play for Brian Dutcher’s rebuild of his front court. And boy do we mean rebuild.

Cherry joins just Thokbor Majak (7’1″) as the two Aztecs bigs that stand above 6’8″. Cherry’s presence immediately addresses an area SDSU struggled with big time last season and that’s in the rebounding department.

Though it’s yet to be seen how Cherry will bounce back from the knee injury, his experience and physicality should immediately make the front court stronger than what SDSU has had since the final four team of 2023. Those teams were heavily experienced and heavily bodied.

Here you can see his body positioning wall off the defender as he receives the pass and one handed jam on the smaller defender. Side note: most defenders will be described as the ‘smaller’ one.

Cherry has major upside for this one season on the Aztecs roster. Before the injury you could see he has the foot quickness and awareness that has settled into his big body. This play below shows a nice finish at the rim from a pick and roll situation. But it’s not all just slam bam thank you mam with Cherry.

Once again he takes it straight to the rim, but this time a little finesse with the lay-in off the backboard. Being a big body finisher is a mandatory trait for the Aztecs and though there’s no evidence to speak of Cherry having a strong free throw percentage, we will sacrifice a bit of that for a lot of this.

Our SD Sports Fiend says it well here. A monster on the boards, who protects the rim, and can guard without fouling. This is what we are here for. Often times the play of Aztecs bigs this year didn’t supply enough of all this in one player. In the aggregate maybe in spots, but that also led to the dilemma Dutcher had in figuring out his lineups. If you have a certain guys that only do one thing well, but not everything that well, it’s a problem.

Cherry isn’t spectacular on the offensive end, but he seems to be a more well-rounded player to this point than what we suspect the Aztecs had last season. Rebounding & defense will always win with Dutcher and the staff, the offense isn’t the focal point with Bear but it will figure itself out in pick & roll and actual post possession opportunities.

Overall, Bear Cherry doesn’t immediately solve all of the Aztecs front court issues. But it is a heck of a place to start—with a firm foundation of size, defense, and rebounding. And it describes exactly what we spoke about in our previous podcast episode when it comes to the kinds of players SDSU will need to pursue in the transfer portal moving forward.

Having a homegrown bounce-back player with tons of talent, solid metrics and that dawg in them to come and play for the team, the team, the team. This is what we expect from Bear Cherry and we can’t wait to see what’s coming from the portal next.