San Diego, CA
Healthier Aztecs host Division II Cal State San Marcos in basketball exhibition
The San Diego State assistant coaches were talking after practice a few days ago, and newbie Ryan Badrtalei from UC Irvine was wondering how many fans would show up for Wednesday night’s preseason game against Division II Cal State San Marcos. A couple hundred, maybe?
He was floored when they told him 12,414-seat Viejas Arena would be two-thirds full.
“For an exhibition?” Badrtalei said.
It might be even more than that.
The arena is practically sold out for all games between season-ticket holders and the student section, the program is coming off a trip to the national championship game and the Sweet 16 (or “7-and-UConn in the NCAA Tournament,” as head coach Brian Dutcher likes to say), and there’s no television or radio coverage of the 7 p.m. tip.
There’s also an added aura of tantalizing mystery surrounding the 2024-25 edition of the Aztecs.
When you have eight new players, when your most experienced returnee is out hurt, when you’re replacing all five starters, when you’re not picked to finish first or second in the Mountain West for the first time in more than a decade, the unknowns outweigh the knowns.
Fans will be interested to see how it all fits together.
So will Dutcher.
“We’re still trying to learn a lot of our set plays,” Dutcher said. “I mean, we know where we’re going but we have to think about it. We just have to move without thinking, and that takes time. It’s the timeline on everything. We’re working every day, we’re getting better. But I don’t think we’re where we need to be yet.
“We’re nowhere near midseason form with a bunch of new guys. We still have some tendencies where we look really new, but we have good talent and our health is about as good as it could be, and I’m encouraged by that.”
Dutcher still hasn’t yet had his full roster together for even a single practice since July, but he has everyone available Wednesday night except senior guard Reese Waters, his top returning scorer (9.6 points) and the only Aztec on the Mountain West preseason all-conference team. That’s a welcome improvement over the Oct. 20 closed-door scrimmage at preseason No. 22 UCLA, when he had eight healthy bodies and six were freshmen or sophomores.
Transfer guard Nick Boyd has been medically cleared after spending two-plus months in a protective boot on his injured left foot (and missing the UCLA scrimmage) and is expected to start. He technically will have a minutes’ restriction, but Dutcher said that shouldn’t be an issue given his tentative plan to sub in groups of five and use his bench liberally.
Dutcher will be watching everyone, of course, but he’ll pay particular attention to the 6-foot-2 point who led Florida Atlantic to the Final Four two seasons ago and had 12 points against the Aztecs before Lamont Butler’s dramatic buzzer-beater.
“He’s been so limited, it’s still a mystery what he’s going to be for us,” Dutcher said. “These guys who have been practicing with us since July, when he got hurt, I’ve seen a lot of them. I haven’t seen enough of Nick over the last few practices to know exactly what I have with him on the floor yet.
“All coaches want a comfort level in knowing what they have. Nick is still somewhat of a mystery to me. I’ve seen really good play from him. But over an extended period of time with the other guys in game minutes, I’m excited to see that.”
Also expected to start are sophomore BJ Davis, redshirt sophomore Miles Byrd, redshirt freshman Magoon Gwath and Middle Tennessee grad transfer Jared Coleman-Jones.
Davis’ spot presumably would be occupied by Waters, who suffered a stress fracture in his right foot and is out another five to seven weeks (and perhaps longer).
The 6-2 guard from Modesto Christian High School appeared in only 12 games (for 67 total minutes last season) and scored 14 points, then doubled that in the UCLA scrimmage.
“We’re a defensive program, but you turn your head at a guy who puts up that kind of points against UCLA,” Dutcher said. “He’s earned his way to start there and see what he’s like. Then I’ll have choices to make, because I have really good players.”
Also available is USD transfer Wayne McKinney III, who missed the UCLA scrimmage with a tweaked hamstring. He’s expected to back up Boyd at the point.
Sophomore forward Miles Heide is the only member of the bench who played significant minutes last season. He’ll be joined in the second unit by McKinney, Brown grad transfer Kimo Ferrari and Las Vegas freshmen Taj DeGourville and Pharaoh Compton.
It’s a lot of new for a program that has excelled by getting old and staying old.
“There’s a public identity for this team that people might not know,” said Byrd, the most experienced returnee. “But this team knows its identity. I think you’ll see the same type of basketball that we’ve played (in the past) but with a little faster-paced offense. We’re still going to play hard, we’re still going to rebound and defend.
“Three of our oldest guards didn’t play in the UCLA scrimmage. That’s just got to show you a lot, honestly. We had three young guys and Kimo, and we were able to compete at Pauley Pavilion against a good, experienced team like UCLA. I’m excited.”
Phelps inducted
Milton “Milky” Phelps, an SDSU star from yesteryear, will be inducted into the Small College Basketball National Hall of Fame on Friday in Lakeland, Fla. Phelps was the leading scorer on a team that reached the national championship game in 1939 and 1940 and won a national title in 1941.
Back then, SDSU was known as San Diego State College and it played in the National Intercollegiate Basketball Tournament, the predecessor to the NAIA. Phelps was a three-time All-American and the first player in school history with 1,000 career points.
His No. 22 is one of three retired men’s jerseys that hang in Viejas Arena, along with Michael Cage’s No. 44 and Kawhi Leonard’s No. 15.
Phelps is one of seven players who are part of the 2024 induction class, along with four coaches and one contributor/player. The Small College Basketball Foundation is based in Kansas City, Mo., and services the college levels below Division I.
Phelps died in 1942 in a Naval training exercise in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Originally Published:
The Jewish community in Southern California is sharing their fears and hopes following the weekend’s strikes on Iran and retaliatory attacks on Israel, U.S. military bases and other targets in the Middle East.
The exchange of missiles in the Middle East is having a devasting effect on Iran’s defense capability, but retaliatory strikes in the region are taking a toll.
“Weapons of enormous capacity that are targeting civilian areas,” said Elan Carr, CEO of Los Angeles-based Israeli American Council.
Carr says toppling the Iranian regime, taking out its nuclear capabilities and freeing the Iranian people from this oppressive rule should have been done decades ago.
“This is about seeing the most evil regime, the world chief state sponsored terrorism to no longer have the ability to do what it’s been doing,” Carr said.
Sara Brown, regional director of the American Jewish Committee, said the U.S. and Israel are concentrating strikes on Iran’s missile sites and military industrial complex. Iran’s retaliatory strikes are focused on many civilian targets.
“We are hearing from our partners from around the region, who are terrified,” Brown said. “Across the Middle East right now, I think there is a tremendous amount of fear, but also hope and also resolve.”
AJC is the advocacy arm for Jewish people globally. Many members and partner groups are in harm’s way. Brown says the risk is great, but the potential reward is world changing.
“That Iranian people will get to choose leadership for themselves, that we will finally see a pathway forward for peace across the Middle East,” Brown said.
If wars of the past hadn’t produced lasting peace, then why now? Carr says Iran’s nuclear capabilities are destroyed and Iran’s military and proxies are weakened after Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas ambush.
“No more terrorist network throughout the Middle East. Think of what that could mean. Think of the normalization we could see,” Carr said.
President Donald Trump expects fighting to last several weeks. Some critics are concerned about a drawn-out conflict that could spread.
Carr is not convinced.
“Who is going to enter a war against the U.S. and Israel? Russia is plenty busy. China has no interest in jeopardizing itself this way,” Carr said.
Besides the six Americans killed as of Monday night, government officials say 11 people were killed in retaliatory strikes in Israel.
San Diego — Before we see elephants at Elephant Valley in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, we come face to face with destruction, only the wreckage is beautiful. A long, winding path takes guests around and under felled trees. Aged gray tree hunks form arches, for instance, over bridges that tower over clay-colored paths with hoof prints.
The design is meant to reorient us, to take us on a trail walked not by humans but traversed and carved by elephants, a creature still misunderstood, vilified and hunted for its cataclysmic-like ability to reshape land, and sometimes communities.
“It starts,” says Kristi Burtis, vice president of wildlife care for the Safari Park, “by telling the story that elephants are ecosystem engineers.”
Elephant Valley will open March 5 as the newest experience at the Escondido park, its aim to bring guests closer than ever to the zoo’s eight elephants, which range in age from 7 to 36, while more heavily focusing on conservation. The centerpiece of the 13-acre-plus parkland is a curved bridge overlooking a savanna, allowing elephants to walk under guests. But there are also nooks such as a cave that, while not previewed at a recent media event, will allow visitors to view elephants on their level.
In a shift from, say, the Safari Park’s popular tram tour, there are no fences and visible enclosures. Captive elephants remain a sometimes controversial topic, and the zoo’s herd is a mix of rescues and births, but the goal was to create a space where humans are at once removed and don’t impede on the relative free-roaming ability of the animals by keeping guests largely elevated. As an example of just how close people can get to the herd, there was a moment of levity at the event when one of the elephants began flinging what was believed to be a mixture of dirt and feces up onto the bridge.
“Our guests are going to be able to see the hairs on an elephant,” Burtis says. “They can see their eyes. They can see the eyelashes. They can see how muscular their trunks are. It’s really going to be a different experience.”
Elephant Valley, complete with a multistory lodge with open-air restaurants and bars, boasts a natural design that isn’t influenced by the elephant’s African home so much as it is in conversation with it. The goal isn’t to displace us, but to import communal artistry — Kenyan wood and beadwork can be found in the pathways, resting spaces and more — as a show of admiration rather than imitation.
“We’re not going to pretend that we’re taking people to Africa,” says Fri Forjindam, now a creative executive with Universal’s theme parks but previously a lead designer on Elephant Valley via her role as a chief development officer at Mycotoo, a Pasadena-based experiential design firm.
“That is a slippery slope of theming that can go wrong really fast,” she adds. “How do we recognize where we are right now, which is near San Diego? How do we populate this plane with plants that are indigenous to the region? The story of coexistence is important. We’re not extracting from Africa, we’re learning. We’re not extracting from elephants, we’re sharing information.”
But designing a space that is elephant-first yet also built for humans presented multiple challenges, especially when the collaborating teams were aiming to construct multiple narratives around the animals. Since meetings about Elephant Valley began around 2019, the staff worked to touch on themes related to migration and conservation. And there was also a desire to personalize the elephants.
“Where can we also highlight each of the elephants by name, so they aren’t just this huge herd of random gray creatures?” Forjindam says. “You see that in the lodge.”
That lodge, the Mkutano House — a phrase that means “gathering” in Swahili — should provide opportunities for guests to linger, although zoo representatives say reservations are recommended for those who wish to dine in the space (there will also be a walk-up, to-go window). Menus have yet to be released, but the ground floor of the structure, boasting hut-like roofing designed to blend into the environment, features close views of the elephant grazing pool as well as an indoor space with a centerpiece tree beneath constellation-like lighting to mimic sunrises and sunsets.
Throughout there are animal wood carvings and beadwork, the latter often hung from sculptures made of tree branches. The ceiling, outfitted with colorful, cloth tapestries designed to move with the wind, aims to create less friction between indoor and outdoor environments.
There are, of course, research and educational goals of the space as well. The Safari Park works, for instance, with the Northern Rangelands Trust and Loisaba Conservancy in Kenya, with an emphasis on studying human-elephant conflict and finding no-kill resolutions. Nonprofits and conservation groups estimate that there are today around 415,000 elephants in Africa, and the African savanna elephant is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Studies of the zoo’s young elephants is shared with the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in the hopes of delivering care to elephant youth to prevent orphanage. Additionally, the Safari Park has done extensive examination into the endotheliotropic herpes virus. “The data that we collect from elephants here, you can’t simply get from elephants in the wild,” Burtis says.
One of the two entrances to Elephant Valley is outfitted with bee boxes; bees are known to be a natural elephant deterrent and can help in preventing the animals from disrupting crops or communities. To encourage more natural behavior, the plane is outfitted with timed feeders in an attempt to encourage movement throughout the acreage and establish a level of real-life unpredictability in hunting for resources. Water areas have been redesigned with ramps and steps to make it easier for the elephants to navigate.
With Elephant Valley, Forjindam says the goal was to allow visitors to “observe safely in luxury — whatever that is — but not from a position of power, more as a cohabitor of the Earth, with as much natural elements as possible. It’s not to impose dominance. Ultimately, it needed to feel natural. It couldn’t feel like a man-made structure, which is an antiquated approach to any sort of safari experience where animals are the product, a prize. In this experience, this is the elephant’s home.”
And the resulting feel of Elephant Valley is that we, the paying customers, are simply their house guests.
A man in the Mission Bay Park community of San Diego was fatally struck Sunday morning by a hit-and run vehicle, authorities said.
The victim was also struck by a second vehicle and that motorist stayed at the scene to cooperate with officers, the San Diego Police Department reported.
The initial crash occurred at about 2:20 a.m. Sunday in the area of West Mission Bay and Sea World drives.
The pedestrian was in the southbound lanes of the 2000 block of West Mission Bay Drive when he was struck by a silver vehicle also in the southbound lanes. That vehicle fled the scene, continuing southbound, police said.
A 28-year-old man driving his vehicle southbound ran over the downed pedestrian.
“That driver remained at the scene and is not DUI,” according to a police statement. “The pedestrian was pronounced deceased at the scene.”
Anyone with information regarding the initial crash was urged to call Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.
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