SAME FEDORA-NEW CROWN?

[PointGuard]

The Jamie Monroe Big West Review

The Big West started conference play with a bang with 4 teams playing 3 games apiece and the rest playing the more normal 2 games this week. And already there are just 2 teams with unblemished conference records: Cal Poly is 3-0 and UC Davis surprisingly is 2-0. And there’s just one team with no wins: Cal State Bakersfield is 0-2. A surprise is that UC Irvine lost their opener at home and now sit at 1-2. UC Santa Barbara got beaten by Long Beach State, a game they should have won even though it was a road game for them. But…the biggest surprise of all…Hawaii won a game, thrilling their home fans with a 55-52 victory over Cal State Fullerton. Of course, the Rainbow Warriors returned to their losing ways when they lost the 2nd game they played this past week.

Corey Heideman led UC Davis to it’s 2 wins and was named the Big West Player of the Week by scoring 51 points and grabbing 14 rebounds. Mike Forrest scored 34 points against Cal State Bakersfield, but his 47 points in Cal State Northridge’s 2 games left him just short of repeating as the Player of the Week. UC Davis gained a sweep of the awards when Andy Collins was named the Freshman Player of the Week. Collins had 22 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 steals and 4 blocks in the Aggies’ two games.

Cal Poly’s Danny Preston strained his knee in the Mustangs’ final game this week. Fortunately for Cal Poly, they have just one game this coming week, so Preston is likely to miss just that one game.

[PointGuard]

Jan. 4, 2037: Cal Poly Mustang (8-4, 3-0) @ UC San Diego Tritons (5-7, 1-2)

PG Danny Preston

Damn, I hate sitting out this game due to injuring my knee. I tried to talk Coach Aura into letting me play since I know I could. But he said he wants to be conservative and not risk aggravating my injury. Edouard La Touche is starting at PG and Scotty Lee will be backing him up. Calvis Barnes is starting again at PF. He’s been playing well, but I feel sorry for Victor Collier. He’s a senior this year and I’m sure he would like to continue to start as he did all last season. Victor hasn’t played as well as he did last season, though. I’m sort of feeling that having Barnes and Luton transfer to us this year put pressure on Victor and caused him to lose some confidence.

Oh, man! The refs called two cheap fouls on Calvis Barnes in the first 30 seconds. Coach Aura is on the refs already. Rough start, 4 turnovers now in the first 3 minutes. I’m going crazy sitting here on the bench. Our D is porous tonight…letting them get too many open shots. Oh no! Scotty Lee just missed his first FT of the season. But he made one of two…we trail 25-19 with 7-1/2 minutes til halftime. Nice going Trey (Small) …he intercepted a pass and immediately outletted it to Edouard La Touche who streaked down court for a jam to cut the Tritons led to 25-23. Then Trey did exactly the same thing on UC San Diego’s next possession…this time getting the ball upcourt to Victor Collier for another slam and we’re tied! On our next possession, Nikolos Ivelitish is fouled and sinks one of two to give us our first lead. Keep pressuring them, guys. These refs are really whistle-happy. Let ‘em play! Hard to get a rhythm going with all the play stoppages. We beat their press and Collier gets another jam…nice! We finish the half ahead 39-34. While Coach Fed will be happy we got the lead, I think he’s going to be stressing D.

Our foul shooting sucks tonight. With all the opportunities, if we were hitting as many as we should have, we’d have a nice fat lead, but it’s 47-39 with 15 minutes to go. Argh! We’ve let them come back and we’re ahead by a single point with 10 minutes left. Final media time out comes with 2:40 to play and us ahead 64-60. Coach Fed tells the team to full-court press each time we can. The refs call yet another foul but the Tritons hit just 1 of 2 and then Nikolos Ivelitsch drills a 3 to put us ahead 67-61 with 2 minutes remaining. UC San Diego gets called for travelling. We work the ball around the perimeter, Trey Small makes a nice cut and takes a pass to the right of the key and pops in a jumper to put 8 points ahead. We keep them from getting off a shot to just before the shot clock is to expire and they miss…that means they have to foul and they do. Again great D which this time forces an errant pass out of bounds by the Tritons. They hit a couple baskets but no problem…we win 71-66.

Nikolos Ivelitsch—15 points, 5 reb; Scotty Lee—14 points; Estell Luton—13 points; Vincent Collier—8 points, 6 rebounds.

[PointGuard]

The Jamie Monroe Big West Review

Cal Poly only had one game this week but notched another victory to stay unbeaten at 4-0 in the Big West. UC Davis had 3 games and lost the middle one at home to UC Riverside to drop into 2nd place, ½ game behind the Mustangs. Two teams won both of their games this past week: UC Santa Barbara came away with an OT victory on the road and an easy win at home to move up into sole possession of 3rd place; and Cal State Bakersfield turned around what had been a 3-game losing streak by winning both of their games this week including a 15 point victory over UC Irvine. Cal State Fullerton had 3 games to play this week and broke a 4 game losing streak by winning their final game of the week. Although Hawaii won their first game last week, this week brought them 2 more losses. The Big West big loser was UC San Diego…losing all 3 games this week including 2 at home…the Tritons now have a 4-game losing streak…their 1-4 conference record has dropped them into the basement in the conference standings.

The Player of the Week was David Barrett of Cal State Bakersfield. His 53 points, 18 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks were a big reason for the Roadrunners two wins this past week. Cal State Bakersfield scored a double award week with Will Morris being named the Freshman Player of the Week. Morris scored 33 points and had 13 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals and a block in 2 games…this was his 4th similar award this season.

[PointGuard]

Coaches’ Meeting (Fred Aura—F; Bryan King—B; Jody Hedde—J; Omari Aura—O)

F—We’re now approaching the mid-point of our season. I thought it would be a good time to analyze the team and identify strengths and weaknesses to determine what we need to do to improve. So I’ve asked Bryan to summarize some of the analytics about our team thus far.

B—On offense we’re averaging 72.6 ppg (that’s better than 2/3 of the teams and worse than 1/3). But our FG% is in the worse than 2/3 of the teams and our 3P% is about average. The only shooting we’re doing well is at the foul line where we’re 55th best in Division 1. We’re not doing well with assists…we’re only better than about 1/3 of the Div. 1 teams in assists. We’re just not finding and getting the ball to open men often enough. We’re about average with regard to turnovers but our opponents are really blocking a lot of our shots.

F—Thanks, Bryan. Now how about our defense and rebounding, Jody?

J— Defensively our opponents are averaging 68.6 ppg (so we’re doing better than 2/3 of the teams and worse than 1/3). Our opponents’ FG% is about average and they’re blistering us from 3-point range with a 3P% better than 85% of the teams. We’re only forcing turnovers better than ¼ of the teams. We’re not getting many steals (about 80% of the teams get more steals than us) and as for blocks, we’re merely average. We’re the 36th best team in rebounds, but that, at least part, is again due to our poor shooting…there’s a lot more rebounds to go after.

F—Overall, not very positive. We’ve got a lot to work on with our players. I think our guys are better shooters than how we’ve done thus far. But we just aren’t getting the movement that gets our guys free and we aren’t doing a good job of finding the open man. So in practice we need to work harder on that, Omari. Defensively, let’s work with our guys about anticipating better to get more steals and opponent turnovers. Also let’s increase our practice time on the 1-2-1-1 Press. Right now its been working pretty well for harassing and we’ve not got burned on it all that much. But I’d like to see us get more steals and subsequent layups off that. I’m going to increase how much we use it in games.

O—OK, I got it and will get started on all that right away. I think that now that we’re going up against Big West teams rather than the tough competition we took on during pre-conference play, some of the teams stats will improve, but yeah, we need to do a better job.

F—Yes, our perimeter players (other than Trey Small and Damien Harris) had really not been shooting well at all, but their stats have been rising some since we got into conference play. We know that Danny Preston and Nikolos Ivelitsch can shoot a lot better than what they’ve done thus far this season. So I expect those two to improve a lot.

B—Our interior guys have been doing a pretty decent job and having as much depth up front as we do is a real plus so we can keep fresh guys on the court while most of our opponents have to extend their guys more.

J—One thing that is different about this season is that because of our depth, we’re playing our subs a lot more and they’re doing well. Of course that means our starters are not getting quite as many minutes on the court as usual. So we don’t have a few players who stand out with high individual stats like we normally would have. We just have to realize there will be more middle of the road individual stats than usual and not be surprised by that.

O—I think all 5 of our guards are doing pretty well as are all of our 5 interior players. At SF, Trey has been doing great, but I’d sure like to see Ed Tenys and Eddie Erskin do a little better when they fill in for him. They’ve both got the talent and we haven’t given either of them a lot of playing time, so maybe if we get them onto the court more, they’ll do better.

B—My feeling is that we should give more playing time to Erskin and less to Tenys. I think there’s more upside to Eddie Erskin plus he’s a sophomore and should develop quite a bit in the future. So the more experience we can give him, the better…and he would do well at filling in at SG as well as SF. He did well for Northern Illinois last year, so I think he just needs to get more in the flow for us and we’ll have another strong player this season.

F—Good point. Thanks guys. The team is on a pretty good roll right now. Let’s keep them focused and improving, both individually and as a team.

J—Hey, FYI: those two ranked teams we played earlier this season are still doing quite well. We played well against undefeated Texas A&M but they got past us. They’ve now lost just one game this season and are now ranked #15 in both polls. And Virginia Commonwealth came into the game against us undefeated and we beat them. But they’ve won every game since that loss and are now ranked #5 in one poll and #6 in the other. So I think we ain’t so bad.

[PointGuard]

Jan. 11: UC Riverside Highlanders (7-7, 3-2) @ Cal Poly Mustangs (9-4, 4-0)

Jack Stevens, neighbor of the Aura’s

PG Danny Preston scored the Mustangs first 6 points. Good offense by Cal Poly early but just so-so defensively. The Mustangs held a lead the entire half. Midway through the half they were up by 11 but let the Highlanders come back to close to within 4 points with 2 minutes to go. Cal Poly then quickly increased their lead back up to a healthy 44-33 at halftime. Danny Preston scored 11 points in the half.

The Mustangs held onto their lead and increased it at the end of the game to win 80-63. Cal Poly was an amazing +18 on the boards.

PG Danny Preston dropped in 14 points plus had 3 assists and 2 blocks; C Dekker Chambers had 13 points and 6 boards; PF/C Calvis Barnes contributed 11 points and 4 rebounds; PF Victor Collier scored 11 while grabbing 8 rebounds and getting 2 steals. Twelve Cal Poly players scored in this game.

[PointGuard]

Jan. 13: UC Davis Aggies (6-9, 5-1) @ Cal Poly Mustangs (10-4, 5-0)

Rob Benchley, Athletic Director

When working out the schedule with the other Big West AD’s, I didn’t think this would be a game of significance, but damned if it isn’t. Not unsurprisingly, the Aggies did poorly in pre-conference play, but then the team came together and has won 5 of their first 6 Big West contests. The includes winning all 3 of their road games during conference play. The Aggies have been averaging 77.5 ppg in their Big West games while giving up just 72 ppg. C Corey Heideman, was averaging 22.8 ppg and 6.5 rpg in the Aggies first 4 conference games, but then suffered a broken wrist early in their 5th game. Replacing that kind of productivity will be extremely difficult for UC Davis. The Aggies picked up Jayson Miller, a JC transfer, who has become their starting PG and looks pretty strong…he’s hitting 43% of his 3’s and averaging 5.5 apg. With Heideman out of the lineup, their leading scorer is SG Adrian McCoy who’s averaging 12.1 ppg but has to shoot a lot to do so. Andrew Mann is a good interior player averaging 10.7 ppg and 6.5 rpg.

Fred has created a team with so much depth that I think his biggest problem is figuring out which of 12 players will have the hottest hand on any particular night…and once he has, then ride that pony.

Our 5 game win streak has brought out more fans, so there’s a good crowd here at Robert A. Mott Athletics Center. Hopefully that helps invigorate our team and lead to some good runs.

Here we go…we control the tip and work the ball around outside...nice drive by Preston but he’s cut off and it goes back outside…with the shot clock expiring Preston is forced to put up an off-balance 18 footer from the left side that is off the mark…Small grabs an offensive rebound and we work around again…Chambers 15 footer from the right side doesn’t go down but he was fouled on the shot…he makes the first and misses the 2nd and the Aggies pull down the rebound. Preston fouls but the Aggies miss both free throws…two misses by us but 2 offensive rebounds with a final putback by Chambers making it 3-0. We put 12 points on the board before UC Davis gets their first point (on a free throw). Great start! We get 5 steals, 2 blocks, and 5 offensive rebounds in the first 7 minutes and lead 18-3…nice! Fantastic first half with rock-solid D the entire 20 minutes…holding the Aggies shooting to 32% with 10 steals and 7 blocks by our guys. We control the boards 21-13 with 7 offensive rebounds. We hit 48% of our shots and lead 40-23 at halftime. Our only negative was making 9 turnovers. Chambers and Barnes combine for 15 points, 8 boards, 4 steals and 3 blocks. Small has 9 points, 5 rebounds, 2 steals and 3 blocks.

Our lead expands to 24 points in the first 3 minutes of the 2nd half with both Small and Barnes in double figures already. WE go up by 30 with 8 minutes remaining…and only some nice shooting by the Aggies’ Adrian McCoy has kept our lead from being even much bigger. With Fred playing our entire bench extensively we hammer UC Davis by a final score of 90-65. We outshot the Aggies 54% to 41% and outrebounded them 41-27.

PG/SG Scotty Lee had 15 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals; SF Trey Small scored 14 and had 8 rebounds; PF/C Calvis Barnes had 14 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals; C Dekker Chambers finished with 11 points, 8 boards, 2 steals and 3 blocks; PG Danny Preston scored 10 and had 4 assists; SG Nikolos Ivelitsch scored 8 and dished out 6 assists; and PF/C Victor Collier had 8 points and 5 boards. Adrian McCoy scored 24 points for UC Davis.

The win extends our win streak to 6 games and puts us 1-1/2 games ahead of UC Davis and 2 games ahead of UC Santa Barbara. Our NET Ranking is 22nd best.

Two of our players came out of the game with minor injuries: Victor Collier has a sore back and Nikolos Ivelitsch a sore knee. They both are expected to play in the Mustangs next game, but their playing time may be limited.

[PointGuard]

The Jamie Monroe Big West Review

Cal Poly had 2 home games and buried both teams to extend their win streak and solidify their hold on 1st place. Cal State Northridge also won both their games to move into a tie for 4th place. UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara fought to a 59-59 tie at the end of regulation, but then the Anteaters shockingly scored 18 points and held the Gauchos scoreless during the 5 minutes of overtime play to win 77-59. (If the Guinness World Records had a category for most lopsided OT victory in which one team was held scoreless, I believe this would be the world record.) Hawaii had 2 home games and lost both of them to drop their record this season to 1-14 (1-5) and fittingly take sole possession of last place. Long Beach State nearly won on the road against UC Davis but lost by 4 and paired that with another road loss.

The same person was named both the Player of the Week and the Freshman Player of the Week in the Big West Conference. And that was……….Will Morris of Cal State Bakersfield who scored 38 points and had 8 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steals and 5 blocks to help the Roadrunners win one of their two road games and nearly the 2nd game also this past week. Pretty darned good for a player who was ranked last year as the 1491st best recruit.

There were a bunch of minor injuries on Big West teams this week, the most serious being a bruised calf for Lane Lewis of Cal State Bakersfield that will likely keep him out of games for a week or two.

[PointGuard]

Jan. 20: Cal Poly Mustangs (11-4, 6-0) @ Cal State Bakersfield Roadrunners (6-9, 3-3)

SG Jason Brewer, walkon

Horrible start. We fell behind 20-3. We then began to slowly crawl back into the game and got the deficit down to 7 points. But the Roadrunners scored the next 13 points and continued to blow by us to take a 53-27 lead to the locker room. Calvis Barnes with 12 points was our only player to show much offense. Coach Aura was all over us in the locker room.

We looked just as bad in the 2nd half. But we again made a small run to get the lead down to 13 with 5 minutes left only to see Cal State Bakersfield bury us again. We got flattened 86-61 with the Roadrunners outdoing us in every aspect of the game.

Calvis Barnes had 12 points and 7 rebounds, Nikolos Ivelitsch and Scotty Lee each scored 11 points. The Roadrunners’ C David Barrett had 25 points and 7 rebounds and SG Will Morris hit for 20 points plus had 5 rebounds and 6 assists.

The bus ride back to San Luis Obispo was deathly quiet.

PG Edouard La Touche

The coaches worked the hell out of us after our poor showing at Cal State Bakersfield. There was no excuse for how we played. The Roadrunners came out psyched up to outplay us and did so. We were put back on our heels and had no answers either offensively or defensively.

[PointGuard]

The Jamie Monroe Big West Review

The big upset of the week was Cal State Bakersfield’s dismantling of Cal Poly. UC Irvine had a good week with 2 road wins. On the other hand, UC San Diego had two home games and lost both of them. Cal Poly’s lead is now just ½ game over UC Davis with UC Santa Barbara a game back, Cal State Northridge 1-1/2 games behind, and Cal State Bakersfield tied with UC Irvine 2 games back.

For the 3rd straight week, Cal State Bakersfield took all the Big West awards. This week David Barrett, who scored 25 point and grabbed 7 boards in the Roadrunners’ only game was named the Player of the Week and Will Morris was again the Freshman Player of the Week based on his 20 points, 5 rebounds and 6 assists.

Cal State Fullerton’s Corey Cross broke his ankle and will be out of action for 2 months.

[PointGuard]

Cal Poly Mustangs (11-5, 6-1) @ UC Santa Barbara Gauchos (12-6, 5-2)

3rd Assistant Coach Omari Aura

Hopefully the team has recovered from its complete meltdown against Cal State Bakersfield and the power has been restored. This will be a tough game…the Gauchos have won 8 of their 9 home games. SG Jamie Howard is hitting a high percentage of his shots and is averaging 14.9 ppg. C Sean Fox is averaging 11.5 ppg and 7.4 rpg.

SF Trey Small will start but has a sore hip. It would be great if he’s able to play up to his usual high standards. We need to have our players keep from making dumb fouls early that get them into foul trouble and making us sit them. Also it’s important that we don’t come out unable to hit shots, as has been the case at times and results in us getting ourselves in a deep hole. Doing that against UC Santa Barbara could be paralyzing. We’ll start our normal group: Preston, Ivelitsch, Small, Barnes, and Chambers. We’ll double up on Howard initially, but switch off if someone else gets hot. We’ve been working hard in practice to refine our 1-2-1-1 press since it’s still not getting the steals we’d like…but we’ll use it a lot in this game.

1st Half:

Dekker (Chambers), Nikolos (Ivelitsch), and Danny (Preston) make it 6-0. Defense has predominated during the first 10 minutes…14-13 in our favor. Our pressure defense was aimed at wearing down the Gauchos. It seemed to work late in the half when we were able to go from 2 points ahead to a lead at the break of 35-27 and get two of their starters into serious foul trouble with 3 fouls apiece. While UC Santa Barbara hit 43% of their shots, we forced them to make 14 turnovers in the first half.

2nd Half:

We increased our lead a little early in the second half even though we had 4 careless passes in the first 5 minutes that were easy steals for the Gauchos. Our continued turnovers cut our lead from 12 points to 7 with 10 minutes left in the game. Fouls and turnovers by us allowed UC Santa Barbara to tie us at 58-58 with 4:51 remaining. Then another pass right into the hands of a Gauchos player led to a layin putting them ahead. With a minute to go and us trailing by a point, Dad called a timeout to set up a play. The play got broken up but Danny Preston got off a shot with 49 seconds left that put us on top 66-65. UC Santa Barbara brought the ball into the forecourt, but let it trickle off their fingers and out of bounds. Calvis Barnes was fouled intentionally and he dropped in both free throws. A quick bucket by the Gauchos led to a quick foul. Preston made just one of two shots to put up ahead by 2 with 21 seconds on the clock. They broke out press and the refs called a very questionable foul on us which led to 2 successful foul shots to tie the game. We were unable to score and the game went to overtime tied at 69-69.

Overtime:

We scored the first 8 points. The Gauchos then hit some baskets but were forced to foul and we came away with an 83-76 win. While it had been upsetting to see our team cough up their lead late in regulation time, it was both exhilarating and satisfying to have them put a knife into the Gauchos quickly in the OT.

Scoring:

Preston—22 pts, 3 reb, 3 ast; Ivelitsch—14 pts, 4 reb, 6 ast, 2 stl; Lee—14 pts; Collier—9 pts, 5 reb; Luton—8 pts, 2 stl.

UC Santa Barbara’s SG Jamie Howard scored 21 points and C Rob Morgan had 18 points and 11 rebounds.