Jefferson P. Nolan
jnolan@mustangdaily.net
The event staff responsible for mopping sweat off the court had their work cut out for them during the Cal Poly men’s basketball game on Thursday night.
Cal Poly (10-11, 6-5 Big West) brought down second-place Pacific (13-9, 7-3 Big West) 67-62 in the Mott Athletics Center. And as head coach Joe Callero described, it was “smash mouth” basketball from the very beginning.
“Pacific’s a really physical team,” Callero said. “They’re going to crash the glass, and if you’re not blocking off and being physical back, once you get hit, you go down. It was Big Ten basketball as far as how physical every position was. That’s something we’re maturing to and able to handle.”
A turbulent game from the get-go, a few missed passes by the Mustangs and tight defense by Pacific put Cal Poly in an early hole as the Tigers led by nine points with 7:10 to go in the first half.
It was not until the buzzer rang for halftime that Cal Poly was able to fight back to a one-point deficit, as the Mustangs recorded a mere 25.9 field goal percentage compared to Pacific’s 29.6 percent.
But for junior guard Kyle Odister and the Mustangs, the focus was on defense. The shots would come.
“Everybody just started playing together,” Odister said. “We’ve been a group that’s been together for a long time. You can’t focus so much on the offense as to playing the defense and playing the shots that are open. In the second half, we started to wear them down. We started to get open looks, and we just kept going.”
Cal Poly continued to trail the Tigers until seven minutes remained in the game. A 3-pointer by Chris Eversley pushed Cal Poly into the lead for the first time since 12:30 in the first half, which gave Cal Poly a 46-45 advantage.
The junior forward lifted his arms to the student section and brought the crowd to its feet. A response by Pacific brought the two teams neck-and-neck, but with the electrified crowd behind them, the Mustangs pulled away with a 17-7 run.
“The run was huge for us because when we’re at home and we score a couple of baskets in a row, it’s not just for our morale,” Eversley said. “It gets loud in here. Other teams do not like that. We don’t have the largest arena in the conference, but we definitely like to make something of it.”
And they did just that.
Cal Poly scored 41 points in the second half as Eversley finished the night with his seventh double-double of the season and with a team high 21 total points. Freshman center Brian Bennett also finished the night with 10 rebounds and notched eight points for the Mustangs.
The Tigers, whose roster includes five juniors and fives seniors, were unable to make a comeback as the clock slowly wound down.
“Defensively, I think we’re where we want to be,” Callero said. “Offensively, I think we’re a work in progress. When we got back home, we were almost too amped. We were almost too siked and maybe trying to play perfect. There is no perfect. You have to play well and you’ve got to be loose enough to knock those shots down.”
After notching a victory in its first of a three-game homestand, the men’s basketball squad will set its sight to Saturday night when they host rival UC Davis at 7 p.m.