This story was posted Friday, Nov. 14.
The Cal Poly men’s basketball team had an entire offseason to reflect upon its poor shooting performance against UC Riverside in the Big West Conference Tournament last year.
But as the season opened Friday night against Arkansas-Little Rock, the Mustangs may have still been thinking about it.
The Trojans pounded Cal Poly 67-40 at Mott Gym, shooting 53.1 percent to the Mustangs’ 25.9.
“The movement is good, the offense was pretty good, but if we’re not hitting (our open shots) and there’s someone in our face and they’re always contesting the shots, then the offensive movement isn’t good enough,” Cal Poly head coach Kevin Bromley said.
Senior forward Shane Edwards and sophomore guard Matt Mouzy scored 15 points apiece for the Trojans, who built an early 7-2 lead and never looked back.
Mouzy and Edwards combined to hit 5 of 8 from 3-point range, helping Arkansas-Little Rock shoot 50 percent from beyond the arc.
The Mustangs shot 3 of 16, just 18.8 percent from 3-point range.
A lone bright spot for Cal Poly was the play of senior forward Titus Shelton, who at times looked like the best player on the court in collecting 15 points, two blocked shots and two assists.
On a night when the Trojans defense was dominant, Shelton made 5 of 11 shots from the floor.
“Shelton is a good player,” Arkansas-Little Rock head coach Steve Shields said. “He hurt us inside.”
While Shelton was able to get looks at the basket, Shields said that his team’s game plan was to stop Cal Poly’s dynamic backcourt of Lorenzo Keeler and Trae Clark.
“We tried to take (Keeler and Clark) out,” Shields said. “(We wanted to) limit their catches as best we can – our guys were very unselfish in their team defense.”
Keeler and Clark, the starting guards for the Mustangs, combined to shoot 0 of 11 and finished scoreless.
“We had a really rough night shooting,” Clark said. “I had seven good looks and they were rimming on everybody.”
Arkansas-Little Rock (1-0), a 20-game winner a season ago, returned all five starters from last year’s second-place Sun Belt Conference team.
With seniors Chaz Thomas and John Manley injured, the Mustangs (0-1) saw four players get their first real playing time at Cal Poly.
“Not having Chaz and John out there hurt us tonight,” Bromley said.
Seeing his first collegiate action, freshman forward David Hanson, the brother of former Cal Poly forward Matt Hanson, scored seven points, grabbed a team-high seven rebounds and added three steals for Cal Poly.
But it wasn’t nearly enough.
“At one time there was only one player out there on the court who had played Division I basketball,” Bromley said. “It was a hell of a game to throw these guys in early.”