San Diego State reached college basketball’s national championship game in 2023 on the back of a 6-foot-10 center from Ghana with an endless wingspan.

The Aztecs are hoping history repeats.

Precious Sam, a 6-11½, 235-pound center from Ghana who is a three-star prospect at Southeastern Prep Academy in Orlando, Fla., committed to SDSU via social media Sunday.

One of the key components of his recruitment was Nathan Mensah, the shot-swatting Ghanaian post who started as a freshman for the Aztecs in 2018-19 and developed into a two-time Mountain West defensive player of the year.

Sam, who also visited Washington and Central Florida, was attracted to SDSU by the coaching continuity and family atmosphere.

“The way they recruited me, the effort from the head coach to the assistants to everybody, they all showed so much interest in me,” Sam told the Union-Tribunr. “They came to all my AAU games. They kept in touch. Even when I had a Zoom call with Coach Dutcher, the energy was different.

“I’ve spoken to different head coaches. It was more of a family, someone who really wants you.”

The Aztecs were attracted to Sam by his college-ready body – he won’t be a skinny freshman who needs to hit the weight room – and his willingness to do basketball’s dirty work inside.

“I do my job as a big, making sure my game is full of energy, being able to score the ball at a high level, setting great screens, dominating underneath,” Sam said. “I do the hard job, that’s would I say – the job that no other person wants to do.

“Being a big is not easy. You see nowadays guys at 7-0 or 7-2, they say they’re a 4 or a 3 or a shooting guard. They don’t want to go in there and get rebounds. It’s tough. You go in there and get elbowed, hit the mouth, everything. It’s the job no one wants to do. That’s what I do.”

Sam becomes SDSU’s second commit from the high school class of 2027, joining 6-6 guard Davey Harris from the Windward School in Los Angeles.

Two other prospects who took campus visits to Montezuma Mesa, guard Lyris Robinson and center Mahamadou Diop, remain undecided.

Sam also becomes the latest foreign-born player in a program that has transitioned from almost exclusively recruiting California and the West to casting a more global net.

Seven of this season’s 13 scholarship players were born overseas, and another, sophomore Tae Simmons, grew up in France while his father played professionally there.

Sam was born in Ghana, the son of a mother who preferred he focus on academics and become a doctor. He didn’t touch a basketball until age 11, but his size and physical development was what caught the eyes of U.S. talent scouts a year later.

“I said, ‘I don’t know anything about basketball,’” Sam recounted. “They said, ‘Don’t worry, you have potential.’”

Brandon Bender, a former Louisville player, brought him to Kentucky as an eighth-grader, where he attended middle school and then Eastern High. He spent last season at AZ Compass Prep in the Phoenix area before heading to Orlando for his senior year.

“I was terrible, I was terrible,” Sam said. “But with time and the mindset of getting better, working out every single day, every single night, being in the gym at 1 in the morning, knowing I have to compete with all these (good) players, cutting out all the noise, I look back and see the growth.”

He fills a pressing need for the Aztecs. Projected starting center Jeremiah “Bear” Cherry and Italian backup Luca Vincini both are in their final year of collegiate eligibility. The only player on the roster over 6-8 with the ability to return next season is little-used 7-1 post Thokbor Majak.