SDSU basketball’s graduate assistants follow in Brian Dutcher’s footsteps

by Mark Zeigler

Shane Geschwind attended Hopkins High School outside Minneapolis. Amir Coffey and Zeke Nnaji, both now in the NBA, were his basketball teammates. Paige Bueckers, the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft last spring, was a classmate.

Geschwind played on the Hopkins basketball team that won the Minnesota state title as a junior. As a senior, he had worked his way to the ninth man on what most nights was an eight-man rotation.

“That was my reality, that I didn’t play a lot,” said Geschwind, an undersized guard. “I remember the day when I kinda figured out I wouldn’t be playing a lot, thinking, ‘Dang, this kind of sucks.’ But it instilled a drive in me that I’m never going to be in a position where I don’t control my own path again.

“It was the best thing that ever happened to me, honestly.”

That path took him to San Diego State, not as a basketball player but as student manager for three years and now as a graduate assistant whom coach Brian Dutcher says “has a real future as a coach.”

The Aztecs typically have one GA, as they’re known, but added a second last season and this season to make room for both Geschwind and Ryan Noriega, another former manager who also aspires to a career in the sport.

They work for a head coach who understands the journey. Dutcher was a bench warmer in high school, a student manager in his father’s program at Minnesota, then a GA at Illinois under the late legendary coach Lou Henson – an experience he regularly references four decades later.

“That’s what I was,” Dutcher said. “Then you fight your way along in a career.”

More inspiration: Dave Velasquez, a student manager at SDSU who, still there 23 years later, is among the most respected assistant coaches in college basketball.

More: the growing list of former managers and GAs who landed jobs in the industry. Former SDSU GAs are currently on staff at Arkansas, Santa Clara, USF, Long Beach State, Denver, Cal Lutheran, UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara. Another is a video coordinator with the WNBA’s Indiana Fever. A few are high school coaches.

“I don’t know,” Dutcher said, “if we’d be the same program without all the guys who have come through here and done the work they’ve done.”

SDSU graduate assistant Shane Geschwind regularly runs individual workouts with players at all hours of the day at the JAM Center practice facility. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Geschwind said he came to SDSU from Minnesota “to get away from the winter,” hoping to land one of the coveted student manager spots. He didn’t. Geschwind was one of the final cuts and drifted away from the sport as a freshman before pickup games at a local outdoor court lured him back.

“To reject basketball allowed me to fall in love with it again,” Geschwind said, “and realize I wanted it.”

He was hired as a manager as a sophomore. After the second practice, he approached new transfer guard Matt Bradley and offered to rebound for him the next morning at the JAM practice facility.

Bradley overslept and stood him up, but Geschwind kept offering his services to Bradley and other players on a team that would reach the national championship game the following season. Then Lamont Butler and Keshad Johnson asked if he’d help them at night.

In between, Geschwind attended classes, did homework and worked practices – wiping sweat off the floor, washing gear, operating the clock, rebounding, setting screens or bumping players with pads during drills.

“I realized if you keep taking things off people’s plates in front of you,” Geschwind said, “you’ll get opportunities to do more.”

Geschwind spends his summers working with a stable of pros who either grew up in San Diego or played at SDSU: Jaedon LeDee (playing in Germany), Nathan Mensah (Romania), Trey Kell (Japan), Brynton Lemar (Turkey) and Robby Robinson (Portugal). He said he wants to pursue coaching, although ideally in Europe instead of the United States.

“Every day, he brings a different sort of energy that you need in the gym,” said sophomore forward Pharaoh Compton, among the current Aztecs who does individual work with Geschwind. “In basketball, there are a lot of variables you can’t control, but you can control bringing a good attitude and bringing a smile to the court every day. I think that’s what Shane does. He uplifts the guys around him.”

SDSU graduate assistant Ryan Noriega is responsible for breaking down film and opposing personnel scouts. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Noriega played for a good James Logan High School team in the Bay Area, starting as a senior before a concussion ended his season prematurely and limited the next-level options for an undersized guard.

“I wanted to have a genuine college experience and not go to a juco,” Noriega said. “The other option if I wanted to stay in basketball was to be a manager.”

He came to SDSU and made the manager cut as a freshman. While Geschwind is a regular fixture inside the JAM Center, Noriega spends most of his time in the coaches’ offices, gravitating toward the film and tech side of the operation.

Noriega stays in the locker room during the first half of games, madly cutting live film into clips that coaches can show the players during halftime – ball screens, post touches, transition baskets. During the week, he’s responsible for opposing personnel scouts, cutting and sorting film clips, creating slides and posters of tendencies and weaknesses.

“I have the freedom to speak my mind on opposing scouts, which is not super typical for grad assistants,” said Noriega, who spends eight to 10 hours per game prepping film. “That freedom is something I cannot take for granted here.”

He’s on track to complete his MBA in the spring, but doesn’t plan to apply for finance jobs. He has his eyes on a video coordinator position in the NBA.

“My parents have put me in a position where I can choose my passion a little bit, and I’m eternally grateful for that,” Noriega said. “I’ve fully just decided to pursue basketball, because that’s what fulfills me most career-wise. I’ve also been able to see where being a manager here can take you.”

As GAs, Noriega and Geschwind oversee the crew of a dozen student managers. They’re in the process of interviewing and hiring the next generation.

“I call it sand work,” Noriega said. “You’re filling in gaps.”