Reese Waters comes to every San Diego State basketball practice, attends every meeting, sits on the bench at every home game, accompanies the team on every road trip.

But the chances of seeing the 6-foot-6 senior guard pull on a No. 14 jersey this season are rapidly diminishing, and coach Brian Dutcher offered the latest indication Thursday with the acknowledgement that the stress fracture in Waters’ right foot still has not fully healed to a doctor’s satisfaction as we approach February.

Waters has declined comment since October, preferring to wait until the end of the season. And Dutcher says he won’t discuss Waters’ status with him until he is medically cleared.

The calendar and simple logic, however, suggest that Waters isn’t returning this year and will apply for a medical waiver for an extra season of eligibility, a growing reality confirmed by multiple sources within the program.

“Reese is out of the boot and it’s fun to see him out here shooting (on the side),” Dutcher told media Thursday, “but I don’t think he’s fully cleared for up and down action. It’s still a slow process. He’s got another (scan) coming up. The good news is it’s healing, just obviously not as fast as anyone would like.”

Waters, SDSU’s top returning scorer and only player on the Mountain West preseason all-conference team, began feeling pain on top of his foot in early October. An X-ray and MRI were inconclusive before a CT scan revealed a stress facture in his navicular, a boat-shaped bone in the mid-foot that helps transfer force from the ankle to forefoot and that can sometimes be difficult to heal from a lack of consistent blood flow.

Waters was fitted with a walking boot and scooter, with the plan to re-scan the foot in late November. The hope was he’d be cleared then to start aggressive rehab, with the target of returning Dec. 28 against Utah State or early January.

That scan showed the bone was healing but wasn’t healed. Back in the boot he went.

Another scan a month later showed more progress, enough to ditch the scooter but not the boot.

Then he was allowed to wear a sneaker again on his right foot and shoot, but only flatfooted. Just this week has he been allowed to shoot jump shots where he leaves the floor.

The math: Even if he’s fully cleared in the next scan early next month, he’d still require a good three weeks of fitness and strength training to be game ready. That would put him in late February or early March, with a handful of games left in the 2024-25 season.

Players can apply for a medical hardship waiver to recover a year of eligibility, but only if you play in fewer than 30% of games and none after the season’s midpoint, which passed earlier this month.

The better question becomes, with one year remaining of eligibility, whether Waters would use it at SDSU or elsewhere? That’s something only he can answer, although most around the program expect him to return.

At the end of last season, when asked about his plans for 2024-25, Waters quickly ruled out entering the transfer portal in search of a larger NIL payday, instead narrowing his options to turning pro or playing for the Aztecs.

“I like the coaches, I like the culture, it’s very comfortable,” Waters said last spring. “It’s definitely a place where I’ve grown my game, and I don’t think anywhere else could do that.”

His actions echo that, religiously remaining part of the team, never missing a practice, sitting through film sessions, rebounding for teammates in pregame warmups, making the arduous road trips to Mountain West locales when no one would blame him for staying home.

“I know that he wants to be out here, I know that he wants to make an impact as much as he can, even though he’s not playing,” sophomore forward Miles Heide said. “His leadership is very dear to us. He’s not a very verbal guy, but he’s in here every single day. He’s leading off the court, which is perfect for us.”

Should Waters commit to returning to the Aztecs, it would be the first piece of what could be a special 2025-26 team — depending, of course, on whether a youthful, talented roster can resist NIL advances from power conference programs or, in the case of Miles Byrd and Magoon Gwath, the lure of the NBA Draft.

Nearly 80% of the offense, including the top four scorers, have eligibility remaining. Four of the five starters, and seven of the top nine rotation pieces, could return. In addition, incoming freshman Tae Simmons is having a superb senior season at Heritage Christian High School in Northridge.

“Super excited to see what it could look like,” Byrd said. “You’ve got guys who are in the first year of college and learning. And then you’ve got a guy like Reese, who already in my opinion was a top 25 college basketball player. Now you give him a year off where he’s able to get his body whatever way he wants to get it, gets to work on his shot, gets to work his game. It’s going to be scary.

“Reese, with this year off, I think he can come back and be a national player of the year contender next year, definitely. If he didn’t hit that rough patch last season, he was trending in that way in the first half of the season. I don’t think anyone can guard him once he’s back.”