SAME FEDORA-NEW CROWN?

[PointGuard]

Big West Tournament—Day 1

#11 seed UC Davis—76, #6 seed Hawaii—60

#7 seed UC Riverside—74, #10 seed Long Beach State—69

#8 seed UC San Diego—92, #9 seed Cal State Bakersfield—76

Big West Tournament—Quarterfinals

#1 seed UC Irvine—76, #8 seed UC San Diego—56

#7 seed UC Riverside—76, #2 seed Cal State Fullerton—54

#3 seed UC Santa Barbara—65, #11 seed UC Davis—48

#4 seed Cal State Northridge Matadors vs #5 seed Cal Poly Mustangs

The first half was back and forth with 11 lead changes. Cal Poly came away with a slim 32-29 halftime lead. Cal Poly stubbornly held onto a small lead until the Matadors were able to jump ahead with 3-1/2 minutes to go. Then 2 minutes later, the Mustangs regained the lead and forced Cal State Northridge to foul repeatedly in the final minute so that Cal Poly was able to achieve a 75-68 victory.

C Don Seals scored 24 points and pulled down 8 rebounds. PG Aki Mosley and PF Curtis Pearson each scored 16 points and SG Terrell Alexander added 10 points.

Big West Tournament Semifinals

#3 seed UC Santa Barbara—64, #7 seed UC Riverside—61

#1 seed UC Irvine Anteaters vs #5 seed Cal Poly Mustangs

The Mustangs beat the Anteaters by 3 points in overtime when playing them in Irvine (the Anteaters only loss at home this season) and lost by 6 points when playing them in San Luis Obispo. But the Anteaters have been the class of the Big West Conference, winning the regular season title by 2 games and finishing 6 games ahead of Cal Poly. UC Irvine presently is riding a 12-game win streak. C Greg Walker is averaging 17.3 ppg and 7.6 rpg.

The two teams slugged it out early in the game, trading baskets and the lead. But turnovers again plagued the Mustangs and the Anteaters took advantage to spurt late in the half to a 43-30 halftime advantage. UC Irvine maintained control in the 2nd half and went ahead by 21 with 12-1/2 minutes to play. Aki Mosley led the Mustangs as they cut the lead to 12, but could get not closer and lost to UC Irvine 84-69.

The Anteaters hit 52% of their shots and had 5 players score in double figures. Cal Poly’s PG Aki Mosley led all scorers with 24 points, but only C Don Seals with 13 points was able also score in double figures.

Cal Poly finished the season with 16 wins and 15 losses.

Big West Tournament Championship

#3 seed UC Santa Barbara—76, #1 seed UC Irvine—60

[PointGuard]

Cal Poly Team and Player Stats

Team:

Record: 10-10 in Big West and tied for 4th place; 16-15 for the season; NET Ranking 159th best.

PPG: 70.0 (130th); Opponents PPG: 71.1 (251st); RPG: 32.2 (151st); APG: 16.7 (186th); FG%: 45.6 (97th); 3P%: 31.2 (279th); FT%: 75.5 (41st)

Players:

PPG: C Don Seals—16.5; SF Charles Gordon—10.5; PG Aki Mosley—10.4; SG Terrell Alexander—10.3; PF Curtis Pearson—8.9; PF Derrick LaLane—7.9; SF Victor Carson—6.1; SF Kerry Hayes—1.9

RPG: SF Charles Gordon—6.6; PF Curtis Pearson—5.6; C Don Seals—5.5; PF Derrick LaLane—4.8; SF Victor Carson—4.4; SG Terrell Alexander—3.0; PG Aki Mosley—2.4; SF Kerry Hayes—1.8

APG: PG Aki Mosley—4.0; SF Victor Carson—3.6; SG Terrell Alexander—2.3; SF Charles Gordon—2.1; PF Curtis Pearson—1.5; C Don Seals—1.5; PF Derrick LaLane—1.3; PG Michael Turner—1.0

SPG: SG Terrell Alexander—1.3; SF Victor Carson—1.1

BPG: C Don Seals—1.0

Team MVP: C Don Seals

Seniors: Charles Gordon and Victor Carson plus walkons Scott Torrey and Anthony Ballinger

[PointGuard]

Janeka Aura

Malik’s team, the Georgetown Hoyas, lost 6 of their final 9 games finishing with an overall record of 16-14 and a Big East record of 11-9, good for 5th place, and their NET Ranking plummeted to 92nd best. They lost their opening game in the Big East Tourney even though Malik scored 24 points. Malik said the team pretty much tanked when they found out they had no chance of going to a post-season tournament and just approached the conference tournament game as more of a chore than an opportunity.

Malik was the Hoya’s top scorer this season with 15.3 ppg. He also averaged 3.6 rpg, 3.1 apg, 1.9 spg, and 0.5 bpg. He hit 41% of his FG’s and 36% of his 3’s. His averages suffered due to his experiencing back spasms for several games when he started but played less than he would normally have. Malik’s stats have improved as follows each of his 3 seasons: PPG from 3.1 to 9.0 to 15.3, RPG from 1.7 to 2.2 to 3.6 and APG from 0.6 to 2.6 to 3.1.

Fred and I both encouraged Malik to hit the books hard for the rest of the term and then figure out what he wants to do for next season. Fred is sure that whoever is the head coach at Georgetown will want him to return, but if he decides to transfer that he’ll be highly recruited by some good programs, particularly any team in need of a very good SG for next season. If Malik decides to transfer, I want Fred to try to get him to play here. But Fred said that Malik wants to be drafted and playing for Cal Poly won’t help that at all even if he were to be a high scorer for the Mustangs.

The Indiana Pacers don’t appear to have a chance of making the playoffs. Omari is averaging 4.9 ppg and 4.1 rpg. He said he doesn’t think the Pacers look at him as anything other than a fill-in player. So he’s hoping he gets traded.

[PointGuard]

Big West Teams in Post-Season Play

UC Santa Barbara (#14 seed in the East Region of the NCAA Tournament)
UC Irvine (#3 seed in the East Region of the NIT Tournament)
Cal State Fullerton (#8 seed in the West Region of the CBI Tournament)

NCAA Tournament Results:

UC Santa Barbara—87, #8 ranked (#3 seed) Ohio State—69
#15 ranked (#6 seed) Temple—88, UC Santa Barbara—81

NIT Tournament Result:

Portland—77, UC Irvine—67

CBI Tournament Result:

Hartford—65, Cal State Fullerton—61

Champions:

NCAA: Maryland
NIT: Montana
CBI: Davidson
CIT: Princeton

[PointGuard]

Mustang News

SEALS SEALS UP AWARD

Yesterday the Big West Conference announced its award winners for the 2032-2033 basketball season. Cal Poly’s dominating center Don Seals was named to the Big West All-Conference 2nd Team. In his first season with the team the 6’9” sophomore was the Mustangs leading scorer averaging 16.5 ppg. He also did a great job cleaning the glass, averaging 5.5 rpg.

In his freshman year Seals played for Jacksonville University and starred there as well. He was the Atlantic Sun Conference Freshman of the Year and named to the All-Conference 1st Team. But Seals, who is from Belfry, Kentucky saw Cal Poly as a better opportunity and transferred here in June, 2032. Seals said, “The main reason I decided to come play for the Mustangs was that I heard that Coach Fed (Fred Aura) had become the head coach here. I was aware of how he had developed strong programs at Towson and Boston College and wanted to be part of a program transitioning from weakness to greatness. But to be honest, when I got here I found that Derrick LaLane and Curtis Pearson had also transferred about the same time I did. I was worried I might not be a starter since I knew they both were strong players.”

Seals, Pearson and LaLane combined to anchor the team inside and together they averaged 33.3 ppg and 15.9 rpg. Coach Aura has said that their deciding to come to Cal Poly played a huge role in the team winning more games than they lost and finishing in a tie for 4th place in the conference, particularly since the team had but 7 scholarship players this season.

Seals scored in double figures in 30 of the Mustangs 31 games. The only time he scored less (8 points) was when he was nursing a sore back. The dominating center scored in excess of 20 points in 10 games this season and had 3 double-double games (double digits in both scoring and rebounding).

Senior Victor Carson said, “Don carried us in so many games this year. Without him scoring, rebounding, and harassing opponents inside, we would probably have won few games. It’s rare that players are as consistent as he was this season.”

Coach Aura echoed those thoughts and said, “I’m really happy that the conference recognized how good Don played by honoring him with this award. There is no doubt that he earned it. He’s a hard worker and as steady a player as I’ve ever had. Not only did he score well inside, but he surprised us all by hitting 3’s with regularity and being one of our best shooters from outside the arc. There’s not many centers who can do that. That forced our opponents to alter their defense.”

[PointGuard]

Fred Aura

Two seasons now with Cal Poly. We’ve won 31 and lost 30 in those two seasons, so nothing spectacular. But a big improvement over what the Mustangs had done in previous years and now we’re at least competitive within the Big West.

With just 7 scholarship players (and only 6 once Charles Gordon went down due to an injury) in the season just concluded, I believe those players were tremendously gutsy since all had to often play a high number of minutes each game and often when they were dog-tired.

There were a lot of feelers from different colleges about me becoming their head coach. Some were very strong programs including Tennessee, Syracuse and Pittsburgh. One that surprised me was Georgetown. They thought they could persuade me to come there to rehabilitate their program and be with my son Malik in his senior season. I think as much as wanting me to be their coach, they were hoping that I would make sure Malike doesn’t transfer. But I want to see what can be done here at Cal Poly, so I’m staying put.

Next year’s squad isn’t much more talented than this past season, but we’ll have all the scholarships filled which means we’ll be able to go to the bench with more confidence. But early in the season we're going to have a lot of guys we need to familiarize with our system and with playing with each other.

[PointGuard]

CJ Costa, 1st Assistant (Recruiting Coach)

Another recruit signed with us this past week. Richard Lawson, a 6’7” PF from Ceres, CA will be joining us. Richard is a good scorer, particularly from inside and strong defensively. He’s the 635th ranked recruit but has a tremendous work ethic that we think will result in him developing rapidly. So now we’ve filled 7 of the 8 scholarships that were available this year. We’ve unsuccessfully pursued a couple of high-flying PG’s. We don’t have much money left in our recruiting budget. While I think we could land another in-state interior player, we really need a guard. So we’ll just throw out an offer to a high-ranking guy from out of state and see if we win the lottery. If not, no problem…with that available scholarship, we’ll go after a good guard in the Transfer Portal.

[PointGuard]

Assistant Coaches

Rob Benchley, Athletic Director

Fred Aura said that while he was willing to stick with the 3 assistant coaches he has on his staff, he’s considering making some changes. We discussed it over several days. Then when he found out that Eugene Wallace, his 2nd Assistant, wanted to shop his name to go after a 1st Assistant position somewhere, Fred decided to let 1st Assistant Coach C.J. Costa go and promote Eugene to 1st Assistant. CJ has great knowledge about defenses, but isn’t all that skilled in other areas. Eugene gladly accepted the new position and increased salary. Fred did a quick search and landed Justin Traore as his new 2nd Assistant. Justin was most recently the 2nd assistant coach at Little Rock. So now Eugene will become the recruiting assistant (rather than player development as he had previously done) and Justin will be responsible for player development and practices. Rashon Richardson will continue as 3rd Assistant and be our scouting coach. These changes actually saved us $4000 in total costs for assistants so I’m happy about that. CJ Costa ended up becoming the 1st Assistant at Southern Illinois, so that’s a feather in his cap.

[PointGuard]

Eugene Wallace, 1st Assistant (Recruiting Coach)

I got promoted and switched from handling player development to recruiting and late that same week we filled our final available scholarship. While I’ll take credit for that quick success, it just fell into my lap since the offer had already been made. All I did was make one phone call. Gee, this recruiting gig is a cinch…haha.

Anyway, our final recruit is Ryan Jackson, a 6’5” SG from Cleveland, Tennessee. Ryan’s the 135th ranked recruit and is a 3-star recruit. He averaged 18.1 ppg, 4.1 rpg, and 2.9 apg as a senior and had a 4.0 GPA. He’s a great shooter and scorer from both outside and inside. He’s also very sound defensively.

We’re concerned that Terrell Alexander may transfer since his father has been pushing his son to do that nearly all year. If that happens, Ryan will compete with incoming recruit Roderick Chatman to become our starting SG.

Eight new recruits could well make it difficult to put together a cohesive team next season, but 3 of them are Junior College transfers, so that should help with the experience side of things.

Now we have to cut several of our walk-ons to make room for all these new scholarship players. We decide to retain SF Kerry Hayes and PG Michael Turner. Both had more playing time than any of our other walk-ons and played well in some of our games. It was sad cutting the other walk-ons since even though they hadn’t played much, they all had worked hard in practice and been ready to help in games if and when needed.

[PointGuard]

Rob Benchley, Athletic Director

Fortunately Coach Aura is remaining here at Cal Poly. I’m really happy with what he’s done here and excited about our future. In his first season here, Fred did better than anyone could have expected with the talent that he inherited. Then this past season, even though his starting lineup was more talented, he basically had almost no bench support and did a good job of handling that deficiency.

That didn’t help me sell his request for a bigger budget…the Board denied it.

Now that Fred’s been able to recruit some players and will have all 13 scholarships filled this coming season, I believe the team will have a significantly better record.

Here’s Coach Aura’s head coaching record in Division 1:

2019-20: Towson, 18-15, .545, unranked, 6th (tie) in CAA, No post-season tourney
2020-21: Towson, 13-17, .433, unranked, 5th in CAA, No post-season tourney
2021-22: Towson, 24-9, .727, unranked, 2nd in CAA, NCAA (Round 1)
2022-23: Towson, 27-7, .794, ranked 24th, 1st in CAA, NCAA (Round 2)
2023-24: Towson, 30-4, .882, ranked 15th, 1st in CAA, NCAA (Sweet 16)
2024-25: Towson, 25-8, .758, unranked, 1st in CAA, NCAA (Round 1)
2025-26: Boston College, 21-17, .553, unranked, 10th in ACC, CIT (Finals)
2026-27: Boston College, 25-10, .714, ranked 25th, 3rd in ACC, NCAA (Sweet 16)
2027-28: Boston College, 34-5, .872, ranked 2nd, 1st in ACC, NCAA (Final 4)
2028-29: Boston College, 30-6, .833, ranked 2nd, 1st in ACC, NCAA (Round 2)
2029-30: Boston College, 26-9, .743, ranked 8th, 2nd in ACC, NCAA (Round 2)
2030-31: Boston College, 30-8, .789, ranked 8th, 1st in ACC, NCAA (Champions)
2031-32: Cal Poly, 15-15, .500, unranked, 2nd (tie) in Big West, No post-season tourney
2032-33: Cal Poly, 16-15, .516, unranked, 4th (tie) in Big West, No post-season tourney
CAREER RECORD: 334-145, .697