The Cal Poly men’s basketball program overcame a 17-point halftime deficit Saturday night at the UC Davis Pavilion with a 67-65 victory, putting the Mustangs at 4-5 in Big West play.
“We explained to the players at halftime that we made some real coaching errors and poor decisions on how to defend them in our match-up zone,” head coach Joe Callero said. “So we went in and changed a few things.”
Callero said the Mustangs were trying to tweak their defense because they did not feel like they were as good at defending the perimeter as they had been in the past.
With changes discussed at the half, Mustang forward David Hanson and guard Kyle Odister each added 12 points against the Aggies. Cal Poly was behind 14 points with nine minutes to play.
Following a flurry of scores, a three-pointer by forward Chris Eversley gave Cal Poly its first lead of the night at 64-62 with two minutes to go. Aggies guard Tyrell Corbin hit a layup giving Davis the lead again shortly before Hanson reclaimed the Msutangs lead at 67-64 with 1:09 left.
Davis put up a final fight, but Cal Poly held its defense and claimed victory.
The comeback win against UC Davis was even more rewarding after losing to Pacific, the seventh place team in the division, last Thursday. The Mustangs were able to move on from their poor performance against Pacific.
“The shots that we missed at Pacific were more open than the 11 shots we made against Northridge,” Callero said. “That’s the fickle part about basketball, we have those highs and lows. It’s obviously like a roulette wheel, sometimes it comes up red, sometimes 11 times in a row, sometimes not.”
The usually sure-handed Dylan Royer missed 11 of his 12 attempts from behind the arc, and Cal Poly hit just three shots from downtown. This presents contrasts with a record-setting night for 3-pointers against Cal State Northridge earlier in January.
As a team, the players acknowledged their mistakes and focused on changing their tactics for future games.
“There is a bond between the players and coaches that comes to fruition when a team scraps when you’re down 16 points with 15 minutes to go,” Callero said. “They believed in each other, they believed in our changes we made to our third defense and had great success.”
Comparing the Mustang record victory against Northridge to their win in Davis Saturday, Callero spoke about the team’s excitement in the locker room after the game.
“The win against Davis was twice as rewarding,” Callero said. “Anybody in the world can coach when you make 11 threes in a row. You sit back, you clap your hands, you smile, you act like you’re a great coach because your team is hitting great shots. But leadership doesn’t show up at birthday parties, leadership shows up when you have to go through funerals. And what we went through in the first half (against Davis) was an ugly funeral. We got our butts kicked in the beginning.”
But when the final buzzer rang, the Mustangs were proud of their win.
“We just kept fighting, we played defensively,” senior Amaurys Fermin said. “We were looking at the time, not the score. The 100-point game against Northridge was impressive, but this one was so emotional for me. It was an emotional win for all of us.”
The Mustangs won for the fifth time in the last six trips to UC Davis.
“Us fighting back like that shows a lot about our character, and the attitude we bring to the team,” Fermin said.