Doing more with less: Aztecs navigate headwinds of exploding basketball payrolls

UC Irvine's two best players entered the transfer portal last month, 6-foot-10 center Kyle Evans and 6-4 guard Jurian Dixon.

A few years ago, San Diego State would have been a logical destination for both, able to play at a higher level for a respected coaching staff and rabid fan base while remaining close to home. Evans is from south Orange County. Dixon attended Saint Augustine High School, just down the street from SDSU, and remained close with the coaches from his initial recruitment.

SDSU spoke with both. Then the conversation turned to money.

Both went 2,200 miles east to the Atlantic Coast Conference, Evans to North Carolina State, Dixon to Virginia. Evans, who averaged 12.1 points, 8.7 rebounds and a nation-leading 3.3 blocks per game, was known to be asking for $2 million; Dixon, who averaged 15.0 points while shooting 38.5% on 3s, was receiving offers for only slightly less.

Together, that's close to SDSU's entire revenue-sharing budget for the 13-man roster next season.

"There's a lot of money available out there," Aztecs coach Brian Dutcher said, "and power conference schools have more money than anybody. … That’s just the reality of college basketball now. We all know that."

The Aztecs are caught in the middle. They are, in essence, a program with power-conference pedigree and a mid-major budget, doing more with less, panning for gold in nearby streams instead of operating mines with expensive excavation machinery, the basketball version of the Tampa Bay Rays competing with the New York Yankees in the AL East.

It has forced them to shift their recruiting model, from the years of being a landing spot for high-major transfers to regularly losing players to the big boys and having to unearth gems elsewhere.

In the first 23 years of the Steve Fisher/Dutcher era, SDSU got 26 transfers from power conference programs and lost only one to them. In the last four years, with exploding NIL payouts and now revenue-sharing, the traffic pattern has reversed: only one power conference transfer in - Reese Dixon-Waters from USC in 2023 - and 11 out.

Six of those came this spring: Miles Byrd to Providence, Magoon Gwath to DePaul, BJ Davis to Creighton, Pharaoh Compton to Oregon, Taj DeGourville to Nebraska and Miles Heide to Virginia Tech. Combined, they're expected to receive between $9 million to $10 million before incentive bonuses.

"We had a $12 million roster last year," Dutcher said of the six departees plus the value of others on the 2025-26 team, "but we didn't have to pay $12 million, because we're good evaluators and we know what players have upside, have work ethic, are culture guys. We will continue to find players like that."

They've just had to look in different places, knowing they're not going to outbid most and perhaps all power conference programs for Evans, Dixon and other enticing entries in the transfer portal.

Instead, they got a physical 6-11 center coming off knee surgery who wanted to return to his childhood hometown … and a 6-4 guard who spent two years in Division III … and a two-time all-state guard from basketball-rich North Carolina who somehow ended up in the Patriot League …

And a 23-year-old Croatian pro with a unique skill set who averages 6.1 points per game …

And a 20-year-old Italian guard also hiding in plain sight, playing on a pro team where the average age of the starters is 30 and no other rotation player is under 26.

"I’ve dealt with a lot of eras of basketball," the 66-year-old Dutcher said. "I’ve dealt with it all. I’ve adapted to whatever this is going to be. … I’m embracing it, I’m good at it, I always have been. I will put a team together next year that Aztec fans will be proud of."

When the MESA Foundation, SDSU's NIL collective for basketball, was launched for the 2022-23 season, its total budget was $350,000 and the Aztecs reached the national championship game.

MESA's budget doubled the following season, and doubled again in 2024-25. Last season, according to information provided in a public records request, the school distributed $2.7 million in revenue sharing to its men's basketball players.

Next season? They are expected to be between $4 million and $5 million, with roughly $3 million from donors or Players Era Festival payouts and the rest presumably coming from an athletic department that, by all accounts, is running eight-figure annual deficits.

The problem: The more money they get, the further away the goal posts move.

Texas coach Sean Miller recently made an "educated guess" that 20 to 25 men's basketball programs will have payrolls in excess of $20 million next season. Every team in this year's Sweet 16 is believed to have had a payroll of at least $10 million.

Evan Miyakawa, a college basketball analytics guru who tracks transfer portal spending, initially estimated the market had increased 35% over last year. A few weeks later, he adjusted his projection to 65%. A player worth $1 million last spring is now getting $1.65 million.

The Athletic polled power conference coaches and general managers about going rates. One GM estimated $1.5 million for a borderline starter, $2.5 million for a definite starter, $3 million and up for an all-league performer. Kansas center Flory Bidunga, the Big 12 defensive player of the year, reportedly is getting $5 million from Louisville.

The results are predictable: The power conferences, which have access to richer TV contracts, have the most money, and players are following the money.

Ninety-seven players on ESPN's list of the top 100 transfers have committed to new schools. Ninety-five went to power conferences, which in college basketball are football's big four plus the Big East. Two are headed to Gonzaga, which has a power conference budget, thanks to the Pac-12 offering it a full media rights share despite not playing football.

An analysis by SB Unfurled using OVR player ratings showed similar migration patterns.

The average rating of transfers from one power conference program to another is 73.0, while the average for those transferring down to a mid-major (or below) is 60.3. The average rating transferring "up" to power conferences is 75.9 while those making lateral moves within non-power conferences is 61.8.

"The math is brutal for mid-majors," SB Unfurled writes, "bleeding top 20% talent upward while absorbing below-average players in return. With (power conference) programs stockpiling portal talent at scale, the gap between college basketball's haves and have-nots is only accelerating."

These are the headwinds Dutcher and his veteran staff must navigate. Their solution is to trim the sails and mine undervalued, overlooked players, trusting their evaluation and development instincts, ignoring the urge to engage in portal combat bidding wars, staying quiet to avoid the prying eyes of rival programs wondering whom the wily Aztecs are targeting.

Instead, they got 6-11 Jeremiah "Bear" Cherry, who started for UNLV two seasons ago but was almost a forgotten figure after transferring to Sacramento State, then suffering a season-ending knee injury six games into the season. He grew up in San Diego, wanted to return home and ended his recruitment before the market for the portal's most coveted commodity - space-eating centers - soared to preposterous levels.

Nick Anderson, a 6-4 guard who averaged 15.5 points per game at Rice last season, spent the first two years of his college career at Division III University of St. Thomas in Houston after getting no other offers, followed by a year at Prairie View A&M at the bottom of Division I.

"He's made the step at every level, came up to college, played well, made the next step, played well," Dutcher said. "Now he's making the next step, and I think he's ready for it. He's been a really good player no matter what level he's played.

Chance Gladden, a 6-4 guard from Boston University, brings a comparable boulder-on-the-shoulder mentality, forced to prove himself in a low-major conference after being bypassed by bigger programs despite an illustrious high school career. He responded by averaging 14.4 points and 4.5 assists per game while twice winning games with buzzer-beaters.

"We had known about him, we studied him, we made some calls, and we just felt we were going to make a push," Dutcher said. "I talked to their coaches, I talked to coaches who played against him, and the consensus was he's ready for that jump."

The Aztecs looked even farther east for two more players, Luka Skoric from Croatia and David Torresani from Italy. And Dutcher says they're close to landing a third European pro in what amounts to a radical departure from the days of almost exclusively recruiting Southern California.

Skoric and Torresani have similar career arcs: rising stars with modest statistics because they're coming off the bench on high-level pro teams loaded with former U.S. college stars and grizzled European vets. Skoric is a skilled 6-9 forward who can shoot the 3 and attack the rim from the perimeter. Torresani is a speedy point guard who led Italy to the under-20 European Championship title last summer.

Both have been pros for years.

"When they come to the States to play college basketball, it will not be a big step up," Dutcher said. "It will be lateral, if anything, and maybe, based on the guys they're playing with, it will be a step down from their current competition.

"You just look at the guys they're playing with and the level of players they're playing against every night."

They'll join a modest core of returning players, just four from last season and only two - freshmen Elzie Harrington and Tae Simmons - who were part of the 11-man rotation.

A year ago, Dutcher had the bulk of the roster back after losing only guard Nick Boyd in the transfer portal. This year, he lost three seniors and six more to the portal.

It becomes a chemistry experiment, then, seeing whether he can coalesce such disparate ingredients into a functioning whole, and do it by November. The nonconference schedule is loaded with power conference foes and could be the most ambitious in school history.

It is doable? Did they find a cheat code?

The Rays, after all, are currently tied with the Yankees for first place in the AL East despite a fraction of the payroll.

"Time will tell," Dutcher said. "It always looks good on paper, but we have to get them all here and see what they're really about. You think you have a good team, but until you get them all here and put them on the same page, you don't really know.

"That's the nature of the business now."

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This story was originally published May 9, 2026 at 10:52 AM.