HOUSTON — Interstate 15 can be a bear on weekday afternoons, a mass of brake lights commuting north into the suburbs.
Brian Dutcher, the coach of San Diego State's basketball team, leaves practice and drives home to Rancho Bernardo about that time every day, heading west on I-8 from campus and then north into the I-15 quagmire. Once you get past Highway 52, there's an express lane that requires a FasTrak account and dynamic pricing based on the level of congestion. Dutcher, who makes $1.2 million per year, doesn't have one.
He sits in the rush-hour traffic like everyone else.
He drives a Volkswagen even though his contract allows a higher-end courtesy car.
He doesn't live in La Jolla or Del Mar or Rancho Santa Fe, but on a nice street with normal, everyday neighbors in RB. His house is decorated by his wife, a talented artist and designer. They park in the driveway because the garage is filled with furniture they're refurbishing. There are no photos of him cutting down nets or smiling with future pros on the walls, no trophies in the living room, no championship rings displayed on coffee tables. He hangs out a lot in the backyard. He shops at Costco.
"He dresses casual," senior forward and captain Aguek Arop says. "He doesn't wear anything flashy, at least I've never seen it. His demeanor, I consider him a man of the people. He's always down to earth. It definitely trickles down to us."
The snarky answer to how San Diego State, a program that 25 years ago ranked among the worst in Division I, got to the NCAA Tournament's Final Four this week in Houston is that they flew there Wednesday afternoon.
The real answer is that they never left the ground.
Basketball coaches like to talk about culture, establishing it, enhancing it, extending it. Usually it's lip service, something everyone else seems to say so you do as well. But culture is everything at SDSU, as much as Dutcher is a basketball savant — able to watch film of an opponent at regular speed and dissect their offensive tendencies without pressing pause or rewind — and his staff is among the most veteran and respected in the business.
They scout. They scheme. They adjust and tweak. But it always comes back to culture.
"That's the special part about this team," guard Darrion Trammell says. "That's why I picked this school, because I knew about the guys' stories, how their mentality and how they grew up is similar to me. I felt like putting that all together, when you a make a team with guys like that, you're going to win a lot of games.
"There aren't going to be a lot of egos and stuff like that, things that a lot of teams have to worry about. No entitlement at all. It's all work, all love, all genuine relationships. We just play together. I mean, it's working for us."
At 5-foot-10, Trammell had no scholarship offers out of high school and went to junior college instead. Then to Seattle University in the Western Athletic Conference, a hodgepodge league that seems to change membership annually. Then, finally, to SDSU after averaging 18.7 points per game.
The Pac-12's USC chased him. The Big 12's Texas Tech, too.
He didn't feel he fit at those places. He felt he fit at a place where his scoring average would be half of what it was at Seattle.
Micah Parrish, who also had no Division I scholarship offers out of high school, started and played 34 minutes per game at Oakland University just outside his hometown of Detroit. He moved across the country to come off the bench and play 21 minutes.
Matt Bradley transferred from Cal, not because he wasn't playing or scoring or getting accolades at a power conference program but because he wasn't winning. He averaged 18.0 points per game his final season at Cal and won nine games; he averages 12.5 this season at SDSU and has won 31.
"We're not going to take a guy that says: 'Coach, I'm leaving a program. I'm scoring 18 for them, I'm going to score 24 for you,' " Dutcher says. "We want to hear: 'Coach, I want to sacrifice part of my game so we can win.' "
Keep scrolling down the roster, and you keep finding hardship and humility, purpose and perspective, sweat and sacrifice. Nathan Mensah left Ghana when he was 15, alone, to come to the States to play basketball and ultimately support his extended family doing it professionally. Adam Seiko has feet in two continents, conceived in Uganda and born in Boston after his mother emigrated while pregnant.
Arop was 4 when his family fled the Sudanese civil war. Ten of them lived in a three-bedroom apartment in Omaha, Neb. Then his sister had a baby, and they were 11.
Starting forward Keshad Johnson grew up amid the violence of West Oakland. His older brother was shot outside their elementary in a gang-related incident, left bleeding on the sidewalk and partially paralyzed from the waist down. Kenny comes to Aztecs games on crutches, a constant reminder that, as Johnson says, "It's like I'm living two dreams in one. I'm doing it for myself, for him, for the rest of my family, for all the kids coming from where I come from. It's bigger than me."
Starting guard Lamont Butler looks across the floor before tipoff at Viejas Arena to where his older sister would sit. Asasha was murdered last year.
The Aztecs had a home game a few days later. He played.
"I said, 'Lamont, listen, you don't have to play if you don't want to,' " his father, Lamont Sr., said earlier this season. "And he said, 'Dad, my team needs me. I'll be fine.' I always tell people how much Lamont loves this team. I don't even know if they realize how much he loves this team. He's really the most selfless kid I've ever met."
The Creighton players hung out with their SDSU counterparts during the pre-event luau at the Maui Invitational in November, then played them last week in Louisville for a spot in the Final Four.
"They're all real good dudes," Bluejays point guard Ryan Nembhard said. "They're super humble."
That includes the team's only real decorated prep prospect, forward Jaedon LeDee, ranked No. 61 nationally by ESPN. He started at Ohio State, transferred to TCU, then transferred again in search of a colony of gym rats.
He comes from a comfortable background, a leafy suburb of Houston and a ritzy private school in Piney Point Village. He's also the team's hardest worker, a college kid whose alarm buzzes at 5:50 a.m. and is in the JAM Center practice facility by 6:30 most days (and is back there most nights).
He fits, too.
SDSU's basketball budget is among the highest in the Mountain West. But it pales in comparison to power conference programs (UConn's is $24 million, or $17 million more) that have dedicated student housing, a head coach making $4 million per year and assistants all in the high $300,000s, catered meals instead of a bag of Jersey Mike sandwiches. They fly charter everywhere and don't have to mingle with the common folk waiting to board Southwest with the B group.
And the Aztecs do board with the B group.
Sometimes a Southwest employee will take pity at the specter of a 6-10 post cramming into a middle seat and issue the taller players early-boarding passes. And sometimes the players won't accept them, saying they want to board with their teammates.
"I just think we have a mindset where we don't complain about what we don't have," Dutcher said before the South Region final in Louisville last week. "We're just grateful for what we do have. I could serve a meal to these kids, and it wouldn't be completely hot, it could be cold, and they wouldn't complain.
"They're in the hotel now, hugging our service staff. Chefs come down, and they're thanking the chef for all the hard work he is putting in. That's just the nature of this team. It's a good group of young men that know the world is more than just about the 15 basketball players on this team."
Arop laughs. Of course they'd like to fly charter more than a couple times during the regular season, usually late night after a conference road game so they can attend classes the next morning.
Or maybe they wouldn't.
"It keeps us from getting soft, to be honest," Arop says. "We're not pampered. For a lot of us, this is how we grew up. We weren't given anything. We're grateful for what we do have. I'm always appreciative. I always look at the positive. A lot of kids would kill to be in this position.
"To complain about what kind of plane you're on, it's the least of your worries. First World problems."
That the roster is filled with unentitled grinders in an age of entitlement is no coincidence. Dutcher and his staff recruit to it.
They look for skill, athleticism, size and character — not necessarily in that order. They tell recruits they'll have to play defense to get on the floor. They tell them they'll have to surrender personal glory for team success. They show them the JAM Center locker room and the wall of Steve Fisherisms in homage to the man who built the program, to "The team, the team, the team."
Another: "A rising tide lifts all boats."
If you're not on board, no hard feelings, this is not the right place for you.
"They do a good job initially knowing what guys to bring in," Arop says. "Then they ask us on the side, once they're away from him, what kind of guy is he really. We'll tell them the truth, whether he's cool or he's not, whether he's entitled or not. Because it comes out when the coaches are not around. We know what they're looking for, so they ask us what's going on and who they really are.
"And we tell them."
The Final Four run will raise SDSU's national profile, undoubtedly, and open recruiting doors that previously were closed. It creates a philosophical dilemma: The Aztecs collected gritty, selfless, under-the-radar players because, well, they didn't have much choice. Now that they do, will they stray from the formula?
Will they ride in the express lane?
"I know the fan base always says, 'Man, now that you've gone so far, you really are going to get some good players,' " Dutcher says. "I'm like, I've (already) got some good players."
