It seemed like the perfect fit. Drew Gordon was transferring from UCLA and he wanted a school with a history of successful transfers, and both his parents were SDSU alums.
Drew Gordon came to Viejas Arena on a recruiting visit in December 2009 with his father, Ed, a forward in the early 1980s on Aztecs teams with Michael Cage and Tony Gwynn. The following week Gordon visited New Mexico.
“This school is really on the upswing,” Shelley Davis said in explaining her son’s decision. “We felt there were some vibes that this is a program on the verge of big, big success.”
She wasn’t talking about SDSU, which is 54-7 over the last two seasons, second best in the nation. She was talking about New Mexico, which is 42-17 and played in the NIT last year.
For the Aztecs, it was a pair of daggers. The first: They just lost a 6-foot-9, 245-pound post who would solve their projected inside problems in the 2011-12 season. The second: Now they’d have to face him twice a year in the Mountain West and possibly again in the conference tournament.
That includes Wednesday, when the Lobos come to Viejas Arena to play the No. 13 Aztecs in arguably the biggest game of the season for both teams. The two are tied with UNLV at 6-2 atop the Mountain West with five games remaining.
Gordon, averaging 12.1 points and 10.3 rebounds, is considered the Mountain West’s top big man and routinely commands double teams. He was picked as the conference player of the year in the preseason media poll.
“A very, very, very good player on a terrific team,” Fisher said. “But this is a business where you’re not going to get every player you want. If you got mad every time you lost a recruit, you’d be mad all the time … You just wish them well and hope they have success except when they play you.”
All the while, of course, your fans play the what-if game, particularly on a team that has only nine scholarship players on the active roster and essentially starts four guards because it doesn’t have a dominant post presence. The Aztecs also came oh-so-close last year to landing transfers Kevin Young, Cheikh Mbodj and Olu Ashaolo – all 6-7 or taller, all eligible this season – and just missed.
But who’s missing whom? The Aztecs are 20-4 without them and respected enough nationally that they remained at No. 13 in the Associated Press poll following Saturday’s 65-63 loss at UNLV.
KEVIN YOUNG, Kansas
A month before Gordon picked the Lobos, another West Coast transfer, Kevin Young from Loyola Marymount, signed a scholarship agreement with SDSU. Everything seemed fine until June, when Aztecs coaches began hearing rumors that Young was in Lawrence, Kan.
A few days later, Kansas made it official: Young, an athletic 6-8 forward, would become a Jayhawk instead.
Technically, he violated no rules. A scholarship agreement, unlike a letter of intent that a high school recruit signs, binds the school to the player but not the player to the school. Still, players rarely renege on the agreement and opposing coaches almost always respect it.
“I just figure,” Young told media in Lawrence, “this is a bigger stage and a lot more opportunity.”
A bigger stage, maybe. A lot more opportunity, not yet.
Young has yet to start and is averaging 10 minutes, 3.4 points and 2.7 rebounds. He played 24 minutes and had 14 points in a 78-67 home win against Ohio State on Dec. 10, prompting Kansas coach Bill Self to say: “I haven’t seen that, or if I have seen it, then certainly we’ve made a mistake by not playing him as much. But that was something like his coming-out game.”
Except it wasn’t. Young’s minutes have dwindled as the season has gone on. Now in the meat of the Big 12 schedule, he’s averaging 7.4 minutes, 1.5 points and 1.5 rebounds over the last eight games.
CHEIKH MBODJ, Cincinnati
On the same day that Young was playing his best game for Kansas, Cheikh Mbodj was watching his season unravel at Cincinnati. With 9.4 seconds left in a game against crosstown rival Xavier, a bench-clearing brawl broke out and Bearcats teammate Yancy Gates dropped Xavier’s Kenny Frease with a vicious sucker punch. Then Mbodj kicked Frease in the face while he was on the ground.
Mbodj was assessed a six-game suspension and, coupled with an early-season ankle injury, has made little impact for the Bearcats. The 6-10 junior center from Senegal has started just one of 15 games and averages 2.8 points in 12.7 minutes. In conference play, his numbers are even smaller.
That Cincinnati got him was something of an upset in recruiting circles, swooping in at the 11th hour to wrest him from SDSU, the school that quietly had the inside track on him out of Grayson (Texas) Community College.
“It’s unfortunate,” Mbodj told the Cincinnati Enquirer last month. “I got suspended six games and being injured and all that kind of stuff, it’s really tough. But all I can control now is myself, just to do things right and get better.”
OLU ASHAOLU, Oregon
With Mbodj off to Cincinnati and uncertainly surrounding Brian Carlwell’s petition for a sixth year of eligibility (which was ultimately denied), SDSU began pursuing another African big man.
Olu Ashaolu, a 6-7, 220-pound rebounding machine from Nigeria, had announced his intention to transfer from a rebuilding Louisiana Tech program for his senior season. Because he had already completed his undergraduate degree, NCAA rules allowed him to transfer without sitting out the requisite season.
Ashaolu also considered Texas and Oregon … and picked the Ducks. “We have pieces there,” he said at the time, “and I feel like I’m the missing piece.”
Ashaolu has started just nine of 25 games, averaging 8.1 points and 4.8 rebounds in 20 minutes. The Ducks are 18-7 and projected to play in the NIT.
