Jordan Schakel was in third grade when the neighbor dad invited him to play in a 3-on-3 basketball tournament in Long Beach with his son.

“I wasn’t that good, but it was my first basketball experience and we won a medal,” Schakel said. “I liked the feeling of the medal around my neck ... Ever since then, I’ve liked to win. A lot.”

It got that Schakel had so many first-place medals and trophies – 40, 50, 60 of them – that they were hanging from his bedposts, stashed on his dresser, on shelves, on the floor. “He got so many first-place trophies,” his father, Dan, said, “that if he got a second-place trophy, it went straight in the trash.”

It is that winning obsession that attracted Schakel, now a 6-foot-6 wing entering his senior year at Bishop Montgomery High in Torrance, to San Diego State and SDSU to him.


Saying that “there was no sense waiting any longer,” the four-star prospect with a deadly 3-point stroke and 4.2 GPA gave an oral commitment to the Aztecs late Wednesday night.

Like, really late. The SDSU coaches were spread across Las Vegas watching AAU games for the final week of the summer recruiting period, and Schakel wanted to tell them when they were together. And that wasn’t until close to 11 p.m.

He becomes the second player from the class of 2017 to pledge his allegiance to the Aztecs. In June they got an oral commitment from Sierra Canyon guard Adam Seiko, leaving them two more available scholarships for the 2017-18 season and their sights presumably set on bigs after locking up their future backcourt. (Schakel played for the loaded Cal Supreme club that includes 7-foot SDSU targets DeAndre Ayton and Brandon McCoy.)

Schakel was also considering USC, Cal and Stanford, and prying him from the Trojans amounts to a minor coup. His mother, Stephanie, was an all-American volleyball player there and currently is an assistant professor. His father is a USC alum as well, and Jordan grew up attending football games just up the 110 freeway at the Los Angeles Coliseum.


“My mom and dad did a good job of allowing me to make my own decision,” said Schakel, who took an unofficial visit to SDSU in late June. “At first I did want to go to USC. But that changed this summer, when I started watching (video) of San Diego State games and seeing how the fit was better for me.”

Coach Steve Fisher and his staff appealed to him. The Viejas Arena atmosphere appealed to him. The versatility of “position-less” players appealed to him. The winning – 11 straight postseason appearances, five Mountain West regular-season titles in six years, Division I’s seventh-best record (169-46) since 2010-11 – really appealed to him.

“There’s being on a winning team,” Stephanie said, “but there’s also the drive to win, and Jordan has that. He’s a gracious loser, but then he gets in the car and we’d be like: ‘Oh, boy, Jordan just lost. This is going to be a long ride home.’ He just doesn’t like to lose.”