SPOKANE, Wash. — San Diego Men's Hoops takes on No. 18 Gonzaga on the road on Wednesday afternoon, the Toreros lone regular season bout with the Bulldogs this season. 

USD is in search of it's first road win of the season and first win over an AP Top-25 team since 2009. 

The game will be streamed live on ESPN+ with Greg Heister (PxP), Dan Dickau (analyst, X: @DanDickau21) and Richard Fox (analyst) calling the action. Voice of the Toreros Jack Cronin (X: @JackCroninPXP) will have the call from over the radio airwaves on USDToreros.com/watch. Inside coverage can also be found on the @USDMBB social channels.

THE BULLDOG RUNDOWN

• San Diego is 21-81 all-time against the Bulldogs, the last win coming on Feb. 22, 2014 in the Jenny Craig Pavilion (Then No. 22, it's the Toreros lone win over a ranked Gonzaga team), the last Torero win in Spokane being on Feb. 17, 2000, 25 road matchups ago

• The Toreros last win vs. an AP Top 25 team was on Nov. 25, 2009, taking down No. 25 Oklahoma 76-64 in Anchorage, Alaska ... The last time USD played an 18th-ranked Gonzaga was on the road on Jan. 16, 2002 ... San Diego is 0-6 all-time against National No. 18 teams

• San Diego redshirt senior forward Colby Brooks spent the first four years of his collegiate career under Mark Few at Gonzaga, before transferring to America's Most Beautiful Campus this previous offseason

THE LAST TIME...

• The last time the Toreros topped Gonzaga was on Feb. 22, 2014: The Bill Grier-coached Toreros upset No. 22 Gonzaga by the score of 69-66 before 4,126 fans at the Jenny Craig Pavilion, stormed by the USD students on the floor following the game. 

•  USD was paced by junior guard Johnny Dee's 16 points and sophomore guard Duda Sanadze off the bench with 15 points, including the freethrows to ice the game in the closing seconds.

LAST TIME OUT

•  San Diego Men's Basketball was halted by the Oregon State Beavers on the road Saturday afternoon, falling by a final score of 54-81 in a game that boiled down to stark shooting contrasts

• The Toreros trailed by as much as 15 points inside three minutes remaining in the first half but showed life, going on a 10-0 run to head into the break only trailing by five

• Shooting splits took over from there as OSU shot 60.9% from the field in the second period – 57.8% on the game and an overall 8-16 from three – to San Diego's 20.6% second half field goal and 7.7% from deep ... The Toreros made five threes in the first but were just 1-13 beyond the arc in the second.

NOTABLE

- Freshman Tony Duckett led the Torero scoring contingent with 12, his second straight and fourth career game in double figures

- Fellow underclassman guard Joey Chammaa, the spark behind USD's hot streak to end the first half, finished with 10 points, a career-best three assists and game-high four steals 

- Freshman forward Kean Webb also played a career-high 11 minutes, scoring two points with a rebound and steal.

HOW IT HAPPENED

- The Beavers were ahead on straight shot-making from the get-go, starting the game on a 5-5 field goal stint building a 12-3 lead by the first media timeout

- Junior guard Kjay Bradley Jr. ended a four-minute USD scoring drought and 6-0 OSU run

- Another 7-0 Beaver run later would lead to a 27-13 home team advantage, eventually ended by a Chammaa three

- Duckett hit back-to-back threes and logged a steal that got the game back to within single digits to kick off the San Diego hot streak, beginning at 2:49 remaining

- Multiple steals and jumpers by Chammaa before the halftime buzzer finished that run at an overall 12-2, the score reading 28-33

- USD shooting woes reemerged at the start of the second half, however, Oregon State pushing it's lead back to double digits

- San Diego started the second half 0-10 on 3-pointers, a strong difference to the 5-16 (41.7%) first 20 minutes

- OSU scored 16 points at the free throw line in the second half

- Sophomore guard Nick Del Bosque made his second career appearance, freshman guard Jackson Gaffney his fourth to close out the game

PUSHIN' THE PACE

•  Wednesday's affair could be a quick one ad USD is among the top 45 teams in the nation in Torvik's Adjusted Tempo at 71.6 adjusted possessions per 40 minutes while the Zags are 55th in the metric at 71.1

TAKING CARE OF THE BALL

•  USD had a stretch of decreased turnovers in four straight games from Dec. 21-Jan. 2; a whopping 23 vs. UC San Diego, to 15 vs. GCU on Dec. 28, to 11 in a WCC-opening win over Pacific (and a season best 20 assists) on Dec. 30 and a season low five vs. Santa Clara

•  Junior point guard Kjay Bradley Jr. has guided the effort each time off the bench, including a six assist, no turnover line against Santa Clara and seven assists to two turnovers in the Pacific win

•  San Diego had 13 turnovers against Oregon State on Saturday afternoon

AN OVERDUE WCC-OPENING WIN 

•  San Diego broke a six-game losing streak in the month of December with a strong 75-65 win over Pacific to kick off league play in the Toreros' final game of 2024

• The Toreros won their first WCC opener since a win over San Francisco on Dec. 28, 2017, when the team went on to win the first three games of conference play

•  The winning formula consisted of season-highs in assists (20, prev. 16) and steals (11, prev. 10) ... A season best nine different Toreros contributed assists ... Steven Jamerson II notched his first 20-point game and double-double of the season, also doubling the single-game best +/- for a Torero thus far (+28, prev. +14)

TOUGH LUCK

•  As of Tuesday, Jan. 7, San Diego is among the 29 unluckiest teams nationally (-.099), according to KenPom ... Gonzaga is down there with them, ranked 327th out of 364 in KenPom Luck with a value of -.090

•  One of the more recent cases was USD's loss to GCU in the Intuit Dome on Dec. 28 in which the Lopes made 36 free throws and 27.8% of field goal attempts ... No Division I team had ever won a regulation-length game by making 35 or more free throws and shooting less than 30% from the field until the Lopes did so, according to the Stathead database

ENOUGH BOARDS TO BUILD A HOUSE

•  In a narrow loss to UC San Diego on Dec. 21, sophomore forward Santiago Trouet grabbed 20 rebounds, the third most in a single game by a Torero, most in 42 years (Robby Roberts, 21 vs. NAU on Nov. 11, 1982 & Gus Magee, 24 vs. Trinity on Jan. 7, 1969) ... The Argentina international was a point shy of his fourth double-double of the season and added on a team-high two steals, a block and three assists in the contest 

SEIZING THE OPPORTUNITY

• 10 different Toreros have featured in a starting lineup this season, the first career start for six

    - In their first career starts the six Toreros average 14.8 pts., 4.2 reb., 2 ast., 1.7 stl. and 1 blk..  

• The latest to capitalize on his first career start is freshman guard Tony Duckett, scoring 16 against Marian on Nov. 27 ... In his first two career starts so. forward Santiago Trouet has two double-doubles, averaging 14 pts. and 11.5 ast. ... Since his first DI start, junior guard Kjay Bradley Jr. is averaging 15.8 pts., 2.8 stl. and 3.7 ast. 

• Sophomore forward Santiago Trouet notched two straight double-doubles in his first two career starts and had three double-doubles in November, scoring double-digit points in his first three starts

HOT START

• In the win over Boston Univ. on Nov. 8, Junior guard Kjay Bradley Jr. became the first Torero to score 24-plus in the first two games of the season since fellow junior college transfer Isaiah Pineiro (28 and 25) at the start of the 2018 season, the first Torero to do so in his first two games of DI college basketball since at least 1999.

• On Nov. 10, his 26.0 ppg was good for T-17th best in the nation, third among players in their first DI games 

• The junior from Inglewood, Calif. recorded the highest scoring Torero performance (28) since Deuce Turner's 30 on March 2, 2024 against Pacific

THE REMAINING SCHEDULE

• USD plays each league opponent twice, except for preseason league favorites Gonzaga and Saint Mary's

• San Diego plays new WCC opponents Oregon State and Washington State in home-and-homes

BUILDING ON LAST SEASON'S SUCCESSES

• With year-to-year growth evident within the program, the Toreros look to continue to build on top of their successes in the 2023-24 season and return to prominent heights ... 2023-24's season highlights included:

    - The program's most wins (18) since 2018-19

    - The program's first winning record since 2018-19

    - The program's best regular-season WCC finish since 2014-15 (fifth)

    - The program's first win over a Power-5 opponent since 2018 (Dec. 9, 2023, over Arizona State)

    - Eight double-digit comeback wins, which led the nation

INTRODUCING, YOUR 2024-25 TOREROS

• Lavin and his staff have reloaded the roster of 21 players, 14 of which are underclassmen, both the most among WCC rosters and most for the program since at least 2005-06 ... The team's average age prior to opening day was 20.96 years

• USD also leads the WCC and is tied (Long Beach State) among all Californian DI programs with the most players from one state on the roster – 11 from California

• No Toreros were featured on the WCC's preseason all-conference team

KEY RETURNERS

• Senior center Steven Jamerson II is the top returner for San Diego, averaging 8.3 points per game and 8.1 rebounds per game with six double-doubles in 2023-24

• Sophomore guard Dragos Lungu is coming off a stellar summer as he was 2024 FIBA U20 EuroBasket MVP and champion with Romania during the offseason, averaging 16.3 points per game, 7.9 rebounds per game and 18.4 EFF in the tournament

• Experienced guards, graduate Deven Dahlke and senior Dominic Muncey, also both return ready to make an impact in the USD lineup

KEY ADDITIONS

• The Toreros add nine newcomers to the roster: six freshmen and three transfers

• Graduate guard Kody Clouet returns to his native San Diego County and highlights the incoming class

    - Averaged 17.6 PPG, shooting 50.3% FG / 43% 3PT / 81% FT at SE Oklahoma State last season

• Redshirt senior Colby Brooks shifts WCC sides from Gonzaga in 2024-25

• Guard Tony Duckett and forwards Kean Webb and Gavin Ripp highlight the freshman class coming to San Diego

HEAD COACHES AS TORERO ASSISTANTS

• Also re-bolstered within the program for the 2024-25 season is the coaching staff; joining Lavin and his 14 years of DI head coaching experience on the bench is three other former head coaches

• The first key addition is former NBA veteran & head coach, Earl Watson, as an assistant 

    - 2016-17 Phoenix Suns Head Coach and four years as an assistant with the Spurs, Suns, Raptors

    - Watson played under Lavin for four seasons at UCLA, ranking top-5 in several all-time stats

    - Joins Fred Hoiberg (Nebraska), Rick Pitino (St. John's) and Mike Woodson (Indiana) as the only former NBA head coaches now in college basketball, the lone assistant 

• Also new to the USD sideline in 2024-25 is volunteer Justin Hutson, previously the Fresno State head coach from 2018-24 and concurrently now an assistant for his wife with SDSU Women's Basketball

• John Moore, the all-time winningest head coach at NAIA Westmont College is geared up for his third season alongside Lavin as a USD assistant

YEAR THREE OF THE LAVIN ERA

• 2024-2025 marks head coach Steve Lavin's third season at the helm in San Diego after being hired in April of 2022.

• Prior to the start of the new season, Lavin had accumulated a record of 266-185 (.589) with 10 postseason appearances in 13 full seasons as a DI head coach.

• Prior to arriving at USD, he guided UCLA and St. John's to eight NCAA Tournament appearances in 11 years

• A staple in college basketball for over three decades, Lavin is the 14th head coach in program history and the Toreros' seventh head coach since USD moved to the NCAA Division I ranks in 1979-80.

• Most recently, Lavin served as a national college basketball broadcaster for Fox Sports and CBS Sports, previously working with ESPN, ABC, and the Pac-12 Network