David Velasquez

Biography

(Entering the 2025-26 season) Dave Velasquez enters his 24th season at San Diego State and 13th as an assistant coach. Prior to his appointment as an assistant coach, he spent six seasons as the program’s director of player development. Velasquez’s responsibilities to the program include recruiting, on-court coaching, skill development and academics. He has been integral in the recruitment of four-start recruit Miles Byrd and transfers Wayne McKinney III (San Diego), as well as Malachi Flynn (Washington State) and Yanni Wetzel (Vanderbilt) as well as high school seniors and Aztec greats Jalen McDaniels, Jordan Schakel and Adam Seiko. He’s played a critical role in the team finishing the past six seasons ranked No. 1 in the Mountain West in scoring defense, allowing 3.7 fewer points per game than any team in the league since the start of the 2019-20 campaign. In addition, overall, Aztec defenses have ranked No. 2 and No. 4 nationally in 2021-22 and 2022-23, respectively, and have ranked in the top-11 in five of the last six, according to KenPom.com. In three of the last fsix campaigns, SDSU led the conference in steals and in two of those campaigns led the league in turnover margin and scoring margin, holding opponents, on average, to double-digit points per game less than it scored. In addition, the Aztecs were either first or second in the league in field goal percentage defense in the 2019-20, 2020-21, 2022-23, 2023-24, and 2024-25 seasons. In 2024-25, Magoon Gwath was the