Junior guard Shawn Lewis intercepted a cross-court pass and was off to the races.
Sprinting from coast to coast, fans in gold ties and green button-ups roared as Lewis ran past all Pepperdine defenders and emphatically finished with a two-handed jam to post Cal Poly’s first points of the contest.
Those were two of the 22 total points he posted to propel the Mustangs to a second-consecutive win, 83-77 against the Waves of Pepperdine.
The dunk was well appreciated by the crowd, but head coach Joe Callero saw the play a little bit differently.
“A common person sees the dunk. What I saw, was the defense that got the dunk,” Callero said. “I love it and it’s great excitement for the crowd, but for the coaches’ perspective, you don’t get the dunk without playing the defense.”
Eleven steals, 16 forced turnovers and three blocks highlighted the Mustangs’ defensive performance Saturday.
“We were in position, we helped, we had active hands we weren’t going for steals; we were just going for turnovers,” Callero said.
Cal Poly, who started 0-5 on the road, completed its two-game home stand with two victories, behind five players who scored double figures.
After recording the team’s first win in front of the Mustang faithful Thursday night, Callero was a bit scared of a lapse in performance. He thought this was a potential trap game.
“My fear after the previous game was that we might be excited about the win and not be excited about winning another,” Callero said.
The 9-28 deficit, similar to the first-half start Cal Poly put forth against Seattle, the Mustangs faced with 8:12 left in the first half nearly solidified his fear.
“Very sporadic and …” he paused, “whatever words you want to come up with for that first 10 minutes,” Callero said. “It was deja vu … a sophomore engineering major in the crowd could see that we just weren’t aggressive … that’s not what got us there.”
The Mustangs gradually whittled the deficit to 10 points, 41-31, at halftime, and took the team’s second lead of the game since it led 2-1 in the opening minute, on a jumper by freshman guard Kyle Odister for a 60-59 advantage with 8:09 to play.
Cal Poly never looked back.
A 16-3 Mustang run midway through the second half turned a 59-54 Pepperdine lead into a 70-62 Cal Poly cushion with 4:09 to go. Lewis capped the rally with a steal and layup.
Bridging the gap to three points at 77-74 on a jumper by sophomore guard Keion Bell with 14 seconds left, Lewis made a statement on top of his already hefty offensive showcase with a monstrous block of a Johnathan Dupre three-point attempt as time expired, his third of the night, that sent the Waves back to Pepperdine.
“The difference (from the second half to the first) is that we attacked the rim,” Callero said. “We actually applied a game-plan … we attack the rim with the post players, we attacked from the wings and not settled for jumpers.”
Lewis, who led the team in scoring, put on a highlight real attacking the rim for the 1,722 that were packed into Mott Gym. With a wide array of dunks, two of which were alley-oops, he spurred multiple explosions of cheer throughout the night.
His most memorable came in the form of an ally-oops off an in-bounds pass from David Hanson under the basket. In a crowd of multiple defenders, Lewis’ waist was at eye level as he finished with force.
“It was spur of the moment … we had ran that play a few times,” Lewis said. “I saw he was cheatin’, I looked at (Hanson) told him to throw it up, he threw it, he trusted me and I when up an got it.”
Sophomore center Will Donahue tallied 17 points for Cal Poly while Odister finished with 16. Senior guard Lorenzo Keeler scored 11 points and Hanson amassed 10.
Double-digit scorers for Pepperdine besides Dupre were Bell with 18, junior forward Mychal Thompson with 12 and sophomore forward Dane Suttle with 11.
With a two-game winning streak the Mustangs hit the road again, where they have yet to post a win.
“You got to be able to move on in sports and not think about what was, it’s what is — and what is, is that we are a pretty darn good basketball team,” Callero said.
The Mustangs return to the court when the team takes on South Dakota State next week.