Miles Heide is … a Hokie?

The former San Diego State center committed to Virginia Tech of the ACC on Thursday morning for an estimated $1.5 million, meaning five of the six Aztecs who entered the transfer portal have found new homes.

Three are headed to the Big East: Miles Byrd to Providence, BJ Davis to Creighton and Magoon Gwath to DePaul. Pharaoh Compton committed to Oregon of the Big Ten. Now Heide, who is from suburban Seattle, is going across the country to Blacksburg, Va., for his final year of collegiate eligibility.

Of the five, Heide is the first to transfer to a team that had a winning record last season. The Hokies finished 19-13 overall but tied for 11th in the ACC at 8-10 and didn’t play in the postseason.

All five new teams had worse records and computer metrics than SDSU.

Virginia Tech coach Mike Young lost seven players to the portal, four of whom landed at power-conference programs. The 6-foot-9 Heide is his second addition, joining 6-9 Kuol Atak from Oklahoma.

Heide started 31 of 32 games for the Aztecs last season before sitting out the Mountain West tournament final against Utah State with a broken finger in his shooting hand. He averaged 5.6 points and 4.5 rebounds per game, which ranked eighth and second on the team, respectively.

He made just 51% of his free throws, which was actually an improvement over the 36.8% and 31% from his freshman and sophomore seasons. Over his career, he is 4 of 16 behind the 3-point arc.

Heide is known to have wanted an expanded offensive role at SDSU, with the freedom to operate more on the perimeter and take more 3s — something that perhaps Virginia Tech will provide.

The Hokies return 6-8 forward Amani Hansberry, who led them in both scoring (14.3 points) and rebounding (7.4) last season. Two centers departed — Christian Gurdak to Rutgers and Antonio Dorn to Wake Forest — leaving them with a hole in the middle.

The only SDSU portal entry still without a team is 6-5 guard Taj DeGourville, who has two years of eligibility remaining. He has been linked with St. Mary’s and Nebraska.

The Aztecs, meanwhile, continue to replenish their roster after losing nine of 11 rotation pieces — three seniors and six to the portal. They added three transfers in 6-11 Jeremiah “Bear” Cherry from Sacramento State, 6-4 shooting guard Nick Anderson from Rice and 6-4 point guard Chance Gladden from Boston University.

Coach Brian Dutcher currently has eight players on the roster: four returnees, incoming freshman Zach White and three portal additions. He is known to be finalizing a deal with a European player as well as pursuing another post, either from the transfer portal or overseas.

Walton connection

SDSU makes sense for several reasons as the headliner for the Bill Walton Classic, the annual event at Pechanga Arena that this year will be held Nov. 7 against a to-be-determined opponent.

One of them is that Walton’s son, Chris, played for the Aztecs in the early 2000s.

“Tuffy,” as he was known, was one of the first high school recruits after Steve Fisher took over the program in 1999. Walton arrived the following year and playing 110 games for the program, starting 76.

The 6-9 forward’s most memorable moment came at BYU in his senior year, when he grabbed an offensive rebound and shot falling backward in the same motion for a buzzer-beating 59-57 victory before 12,633 at the Marriott Center.

“It’s hard recruiting anybody,” Dutcher said at Wednesday’s media announcement of the new event. “A little easier back then when I didn’t have to offer them a lot of money to come, but Chris was like any recruit we’ve ever had. We had to convince him of what we dreamed for the program.

“Because back then, we hadn’t done a whole lot at that point. He had to believe in Coach Fisher’s vision for what San Diego State could become, would become. Chris was one of the first to believe in our vision, so we’re always grateful to Chris.”

With him came the Walton family, a La Mesa institution.

“I think there was an Aztecs player or two over the years who sat in that Walton hot tub with Tuffy,” Dutcher said. “What went on over there, I don’t ask. But I know the Aztec family spent a lot of time in that teepee and in the Walton house.”

Sports Arena days

The game will be SDSU’s first return to Pechanga Arena (then called the San Diego Sports Arena) since Viejas Arena opened for the 1997-98 season. Before that, the Aztecs regularly played home games at the Sports Arena or on campus at Peterson Gym.

Their largest home crowd came there, 13,106 for a 103-92 loss against No. 7-ranked North Carolina in 1988.

Said Dutcher: “It’s an opportunity for people who don’t have season tickets at Viejas to get good seats for an Aztecs game at Pechanga Arena, where the Aztecs used to have their home and for Aztecs fans who used to have tickets there to get back in the building.

“I hear all the time: ‘We’ve been season ticket holders for 30 and 40 years.’ Ten of those years were in Pechanga, so get back into Pechanga, bring back some good memories of that building and watch your Aztecs play in there again.”