On Friday, October 16th, San Diego State will head over to Tucson, Arizona for their first exhibition of the year against the Arizona Wildcats.
For Arizona, this will be their second exhibition of the week, as they faced off against San Francisco on Tuesday, October 13th. The Wildcats came out victorious, defeating the Dons, 93-69.
Arizona’s center, Motiejus Krivas, a 7’2″ Lithuanian classified senior scored a team high 20 points, shot 8 of 10 from the free throw line and grabbed six rebounds for the Cats.
Overall, Arizona looked very complete as they had 3 players who scored 17 or more points, including German sophomore forward Ivan Kharchenkov with 18 and freshman guard Caleb Holt with 17. UofA also held USF to under 70 points.
When it comes to San Diego State, this will be the team’s first exhibition of the season. The Aztecs have a very different roster this season, as a ton of players either left in the transfer portal or graduated.
There are three new Europeans that Dutcher & staff picked up in the off season, one of them being Luka Scoric who is currently out with a groin injury. Forward Luca Vincini and guard David Torresani, two Italian additions will give Aztec fans a preview on what this year’s season could look like.
SDSU also picked up a few players in the portal, including wings Isaiah Sy and Chance Gladden, as well as local big man Bear Cherry. Expectations for each addition is very high and each of whom may have opportunities to start for the Aztecs.
When it comes to some familiar faces that are expected to play big roles, Elzie Harrington and Tae Simmons are two returners who were key players in last year’s SDSU team. Their unselfish play led to many opportunities to get on the floor as true freshman. That head start in the system will be relied upon to be young leaders in 2026-2027.
One highly anticipated returning Aztec is guard Latrell Davis. Having redshirted last season, the wait will have to be a little while longer as Davis has suffered a lingering shoulder injury issue.
“My intention is to hold him out of the Ariaona scrimmage knowing the regular season is right around the corner.” said Dutcher. “He’s not the kind of guy to go out there and all a sudden let up and not try to get hurt. He only knows one way to play and that’s full speed.”
The lingering issue will set his debut back and out of the team’s exhibition games. How long is not fully known as of now, but Brian Dutcher feels confident in his ability to return and fit in.
For this Friday’s exhibition game, San Diego State will be facing a very good team that reached last year’s NCAA Final Four, in a tough McKale Center environment regardless of it being an exhibition or not.
Despite the Wildcats deep tournament run last year, Coach Tommy Lloyd did lose some key players like Koa Peat and Anthony Dell’Orso. Regardless of that, Arizona is ranked fourth in the ESPN preseason poll and is still a national championship contender.
According to VegasInsider, Arizona is favored by 13.5 points in this Friday’s match. Much of that money is coming in relying on the fact that Arizona is a very complete team with spectacular guards, forwards, and big men all around.
A matchup that will be very fun to watch will be the already mentioned Wildcat big man, Motiejus Krivas vs SDSU’s Bear Cherry. Krivas averaged 10.4 ppg last year, while Cherry averaged 15.5.
While they played at very different levels of college basketball, this will definitely be an exciting matchup to watch, especially to see how Cherry stacks up and how his early action returning from injury goes.
“He’s all 6’10” 270 lbs,” Dutcher spoke about Cherry in his weekly presser. “That being said he’s super athletic, super agile. My number one concern with Bear is keeping him out of foul trouble. We’re working on that daily—how to defend without fouling.”
“And then getting on better balance in and around the basket. He’s a good finisher around the basket. Bear’s everything I thought he would be.”
Overall, this exhibition will be great to prepare San Diego State for this tough first season in the PAC12. If the Aztecs can compete in this environment against this national championship contending Arizona team, they can compete against any of their nationally ranked opponents.
Tip-off between San Diego State and Arizona is schedule for October 16, at 7:30pm PST and the game will be broadcasted via ESPN+.
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
