Nov. 6—New Mexico State had a good pulse on DJ Dudley before the Aggies visited Louisiana Tech last season for a Conference USA matchup on Feb. 4.
New Mexico State coach Jason Hooten watched film of the four games Dudley played before he squared off with the Aggies: a 25-point effort against Jacksonville State, 20-point efforts against Kennesaw State and UTEP and a 21-point game against Sam Houston State.
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Those performances moved Dudley to the top of New Mexico State’s scouting report — if he wasn’t already there — and potentially put him near the top of Hooten’s offseason wish list. Dudley entered the transfer portal a few months later and committed to the Aggies on April 23, giving the fourth-year coach experience and production in his reconstructed backcourt.
Dudley is no longer on Hooten’s scouting report, but he’ll be at the top of opposing ones this season, including the scouting report No. 15 Gonzaga (1-0) is finalizing before Saturday’s 2 p.m. (KHQ) home opener against New Mexico State (1-0) at McCarthey Athletic Center.
“We took him because he was an all-conference guy who averaged 15 (points), helped his team go to the conference championship game,” Hooten said during a phone interview earlier this week. “He’s got that experience, he’s kind of been there and done that. Just really my biggest thing with him is taking that next step and having that level of consistency to where you can depend on him to be a guy you can ride a little bit.”
Dudley was an All-Conference USA First Team selection in 2025-26 and not surprisingly appeared on the 10-player Preseason All-Conference USA Team released last month.
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A 6-foot-3 guard, Dudley averaged 13.8 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.0 assists last season, shooting 43.1% from the field while making 36.2% from the 3-point line on 4.8 attempts per game. He averaged 14.8 ppg in C-USA games, reaching the 20-point threshold seven times in league play.
“Definitely a shot-maker, a guy that can play one on one and get a basket maybe when you need one,” Hooten said. “Trying to get him better and every coach is different. You play for a different coach, different style, different expectations. So he’s trying to learn those things. Good player and we’re going to have to have him now even more with Gabe out for the year.”
A native of Okinawa, Japan, Dudley is well-traveled. After playing high school basketball at LA (Los Angeles) Premier Prep, he started his college career at New Jersey-based Rider University in 2023-24 before transferring to Hutchinson Community College in Kansas and then Louisiana Tech.
Dudley’s junior season didn’t end on a good note — the guard had just five points on 2 of 16 shooting in a Conference USA title game loss to the Kennesaw State team Gonzaga faced in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament — but he’s off to a strong start at NMSU, scoring 22 points in Tuesday’s opener against Western New Mexico.
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Dudley should be a good early-season test for Gonzaga’s Isiah Harwell, a quality perimeter defender who’s expected to take on most of the team’s top defensive assignments after spending a year with Kelvin Sampson at Houston.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
