The college basketball transfer portal officially opens April 7, the morning after the national championship game.
Unofficially, it’s already open.
Who’s in it?
“You have to understand this: Everybody’s in the portal,” San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher said Tuesday in a wide-ranging, 30-minute session with media. “If they have an agent, they’re in the portal. They’re entertaining offers from everywhere.
“Agents are talking to people every day (who) are saying, ‘Well, what about your guy? Here’s what he’s worth. Here’s what I’d be willing to pay him if he goes in the portal.’ So even though guys aren’t in the portal, they’re in the portal.”
SDSU’s 2025-26 season ended Sunday afternoon, when the Aztecs didn’t receive an invitation to the NCAA Tournament and declined one for the NIT or any other postseason event. The 2026-27 season began Tuesday, when Dutcher and his staff began exit meetings with players in between watching film of potential college transfers and, he revealed, even European pros.
It is a novel, weird space for the Aztecs. This is the first time in six seasons and only the fourth time in the last 20 years that they haven’t played in the postseason. They’ve historically been watching film of their next NCAA Tournament opponent during this week, not who might play for them next season.
And this is the first time they might experience the kind of massive roster overhaul that is becoming commonplace in this age of transaction and transiency.
Asked if fans should be prepared for the worst, Dutcher said: “You know, I really don’t know … There’ll be familiar faces and there’ll be new faces.”
It is a delicate dance that will play out over the next three weeks.
“I want guys who want to be back,” Dutcher said. “I don’t want to talk anybody into coming back. If you want to come back, here’s what you have to do to become a better player. If you don’t want to come back, I’m going to hug you and wish you well and know that there are great opportunities for everybody out there. There’s nothing personal about it.”
Seniors Reese Dixon-Waters, Sean Newman Jr. and Jeremiah Oden are out of eligibility. Miles Byrd is a fourth-year junior who is on schedule to graduate in May and, like former teammates Keshad Johnson, Lamont Butler and Nick Boyd, a strong candidate to chase the money elsewhere for his final season of eligibility.
Or, as Dutcher put it: “Does he want to be a pro next year at another college? Is the money that drastically different? Yes, it is.”
Boyd was making $250,000 at SDSU two seasons ago and left for Wisconsin for what Dutcher estimated is between $1.2 million and $1.5 million. Johnson and Butler both received well into six figures, more than double what they got at SDSU.
That leaves seven members of this season’s 11-man rotation.
“My thought is most of our guys want to stay,” Dutcher said. “They like it here, like how they’re being treated. … If they don’t stay, I don’t think it’s an indictment of how they were treated and how much they love their experience. It’s an indictment of there’s a lot of financial gain out there for some of them.”
It’s not just who wants to come back, but who the coaches want back — a distinction Dutcher has hinted at recently.
“The sad reality,” former coach and current ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla posted on social media, “is that in order to survive in college basketball, in next few weeks, you have to fire the highly paid, unproductive players the way coaches are fired. I think everyone is OK with that.”
The next factor is determining who else is out there, and for what price, and how that compares with what you have and where that fits within your revenue-sharing and NIL budget.
The dance: Programs don’t immediately commit to players, and players don’t immediately commit to programs. Sometime before April 7, it reaches critical mass and decisions are made.
Magoon Gwath, who briefly entered the portal last spring, was widely believed to be SDSU’s highest-paid player this season but spent most of it hobbled and underachieving. Will they keep him at the same price or offer less?
“We’ll see where that leads in his future,” Dutcher said, “either at San Diego State or somewhere else.”
Miles Heide and Pharaoh Compton split time in the post, and neither was particularly proficient on the boards, and Dutcher made it clear Tuesday that “I have to recruit a rebounder.” So do they keep both, or only one, or neither?
Are Taj DeGourville or BJ Davis expendable, given Dutcher’s effusive comments about San Jose State transfer Latrell Davis, who sat out as a redshirt this season and often was the best player on the floor at practice?
“I think if we had him and played him this year, we’d be in the NCAA Tournament,” Dutcher said of the 6-foot-3 English guard who is equally proficient shooting the 3 or getting to the rim. “He’s extremely talented, and he has a skill set that some of the players I had on the team didn’t have this year.
“I think he’ll have a chance to be a first-team all-conference type player.”
Dutcher sounded hopeful he can keep true freshmen Elzie Harrington and Tae Simmons. Harrington moved into the starting lineup in late November and stayed there when he wasn’t injured. Simmons’ minutes increased throughout the season, and he was a surprise starter in the Mountain West Tournament.
“I think they would, as I sit here today, both want to come back,” Dutcher said. “Now we’ll see what happens between now and the portal to make that happen.”
Harrington, Simmons and Latrell Davis provide a solid foundation, plus maybe a couple more upperclassmen off the current roster, plus 6-6 incoming freshman Zach White from Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks.
That still could mean a half-dozen newcomers, either from across the country or, possibly, across the ocean.
Dutcher has had foreign players, but almost exclusively from Africa and most who attended high school in the United States. The NCAA is now granting eligibility to European pros in their early 20s, and the Aztecs don’t have to look far to understand their impact. Seven of their losses came to teams that started a European center, most notably 23-year-old Croatian pro Tomislav Buljan at New Mexico and 7-1 Turkish center Efe Demeril with a Grand Canyon team that swept the regular-season series.
“Yeah, absolutely,” Dutcher said when asked about the European pro market. “We’re actively looking overseas to see what’s available. There are a couple of kids I’m supposed to be doing Zoom calls with here in a week or two, trying to decide what their interest level is and then financially what it will involve getting them over here.”
It’s all part of an intricate tango they’re learning on the dance floor, while the music is playing.
“I have a staff and people around me that are good at what they do,” Dutcher said. “We will keep San Diego State relevant on a national level. I promise you that.”