SAME FEDORA-NEW CROWN?

[PointGuard]

Fresno State Bulldogs (8-7, 2-0) @ Cal Poly Mustangs (8-7, 1-1)

Colin Chang (Musty the Mustang mascot)

I’m still wearing the Musty the Mustang costume for games. It’s a cool gig and the crowd loves it. Fresno State has brought their mascot “Time Out” over for the game. FSU also has a real Bulldog mascot but doesn’t bring him on trips. Time Out and I will be going up against each other in a series of challenges at halftime tonight. I think the fans will really like it.

Fresno State comes into this game tied for 1st place with Boise State which are the only unbeaten teams in conference contests. For us Steve Hastings is still out of action. He’s not only a talented player but has a lot of experience that really helps solidify our young team. I’ll give you a brief summary of what happens in the game, but at halftime i have to concentrate on beating Time Out.

First Half:

As has often been the case with the Mustangs this season, we didn’t shoot well during the first half and we were behind 37-29 at the break. Also the Bulldogs SF Alvaster Andersson torched us for 16 first half points.

Halftime:

The winner of the mascot competition was to be the mascot to come out on top of 4 of 7 activities we fought out during halftime. After 6, Time Out and I were tied at 3 each. I’m proud to say that Musty the Mustang won the 7th and was crowned “The Most Outstanding Mascot”. Time Out complained that I cheated, but the contest was on my home court and was played according to the Official Musty the Mascot Rules. Time Out vowed to be an eternal Mascot Contest Denier, contest the results, and said he will take it all the way to the Supreme Court. I gave him one of my patented Musty the Mustang retorts, “Buck Off”.

Second Half:

Fresno State bombed away from outside and held a solid lead throughout the half. The Bulldogs hit 16 of 25 shots from beyond the arc during the game and beat us 88-80.

Topping our scoring were: C Brandon Bailey with 16 points (plus 8 boards); SG Jase Carroll—12 points; and SF Louis Taylor—11 points. Fresno State’s SF Alvaster Andersson poured in 28 points and SG Lionel Slay scored 23 points.

[PointGuard]

Cal Poly Mustangs (8-8, 1-2) @ Air Force Falcons (11-5, 1-2)

Omari Aura, 3rd Assistant Coach (player development/practice)

We’re in the midst of a so-so season. My feeling is that our team is starting to coalesce, but the results have yet to show that. We’re averaging 69.9 ppg this season. I’d like to see us put at least an additional 10 points on the scoreboard tonight. I’m hoping our offense picks up tonight and we shoot better than we’ve done in most of our games this year. We’ve been working diligently on our sets to create the space that will give us some clear shots. We’ll still be without PF Steve Hastings, so our freshmen big men will need to do a good job of filling in for him. Micah Hannah will be our starting PF tonight. Micah has really picked up his game as the season has progressed.

The Falcons had a good pre-conference record although their schedule was rather weak. In conference play they’ve lost their only road game and have split their 2 home games. SG Tyran Abrams is averaging 16.4 ppg so we’ll double team him at least in the early stages of the game to try to keep the ball out of hands as much as possible and harass the hell out of him when he does get the ball. Tip off time, so here we go:

The Falcons come out drilling the basket to take a 12-4 lead. We have a few good mini-runs in the half but never can continue them long enough to gain a lead and trail 35-31 going into the 2nd half. C Whittfield, SF Fuhs and SG Abrams combined to score 31 of the Falcons’ 35 points.

It took nearly 4 minutes for either team to score in the 2nd half. We’re not taking advantage of mismatches, when they occur. We’re unable to break the pattern established in the first half…of us getting close and then falling back. Air Force flew by us for a 73-64 win. Our loss dropped us into a 3-way tie for last place in the conference.

We had 3 players score in double figures: SG Jase Carroll—16 points plus 3 rebounds, 2 assists; PF Lane Lynch—12 points, 4 rebounds; and PF/C Micah Hannah—10 points, 3 rebounds.

[PointGuard]

#10 ranked Colorado State Rams (16-3, 1-3) @ Cal Poly Mustangs (8-9, 1-3)

Benny Tamago, realtor (fan)

I’d grown used to the Mustangs winning most of their games. So it’s depressing with how they’re playing this season. And while Colorado State has the same dismal conference record as Cal Poly, the Rams were undefeated in preconference games and still are ranked in the Top 10 in the polls.

The game was extremely close throughout the first half with several lead changes. Louis Taylor made a cut inside and Jon Overton fed the ball to him for a reverse layup to give Cal Poly a 40-39 halftime lead. Taylor scored 14 points in the half.

Following a strong offensive display by both teams in the first half, the 2nd half turned out to be a defensive juggernaut. The Mustangs D was the stronger. Cal Poly slowly pulled away and with 8 minutes to go led by 11 points. But the Rams began whittling away at the lead and got within 3 with 2 minutes to go. Cal Poly held on and gained some breathing space to win 72-65.

Topping the scoring for the Mustangs was SF Louis Taylor with 21 points and pulled down 8 boards while blocking 4 blocks. SG Jase Carroll had 12 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 blocks. C Brandon Bailey recorded a double-double with 11 points and 12 rebounds plus dished out 3 asssists. PG Jon Overton had 9 points, 4 rebounds, 5 assists, and 2 steals.

[PointGuard]

Cal Poly Mustangs (9-9, 2-3) @ San Diego State Aztecs (15-4, 4-1)

Cory McCreight, 1st Assistant Coach (Recruiting)

There were 13 lead changes in the first 14 minutes of this game. But then we moved out to lead 30-24 when the half ended. Great defense which continued in the 2nd half. We held a small 3-6 point lead but again in the final 6 minutes we pulled away and handed the heavily favored Aztecs a 61-51 defeat.

PF Steve Hastings returned and led our scoring with 15 points. SF Louis Taylor and PF/C Lane Lynch both scored 9 points. Hastings, C Brandon Bailey, and C Earl Barkley each pulled down 7 rebounds and PG Gary Van Dyke had 4 assists.

We’re now in a 7-way mob that’s tied for 4th place in the conference, just one game behind the 3 co-leaders.

[CoachPrm15]

Finally, have read through this, excellent work on your end. It looks as if your younger players are starting to develop. Hopefully they will continue to improve, and your guys will climb the MWC standings.

[PointGuard]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed.

This season has been a challenge, although I suspected we'd have a tough time in the new conference. But I thought that at least a couple of the 6 freshmen (who came to us as solid recruits) would join the team with higher skill levels. But they're not being ready to make consistent contributions is actually pretty realistic.

[PointGuard]

New Mexico Lobos (9-10, 2-4) @ Cal Poly Mustangs (10-9, 3-3)

Zahara Carter, Assistant (sports administration)

We grabbed the lead very early and then never gave it up. By the end of the first half we were up 46-36. As in our previous two games, our defense in the 2nd half was stellar. We went ahead by as much as 20 points and then coasted to a 74-64 victory. Our 3rd straight win moved us into 3rd place, tied with 4 other teams, a game behind UNLV and Fresno State.

As in our last game, PF Steve Hastings was dynamite, scoring 17 points and pulled down 4 boards as well as blocking 2 shots. C Micah Hannah came in off the bench to score 10 points and grab 5 rebounds. C Brandon Bailey had 9 points, 9 rebounds, and 3 assists

Colorado State, which 15 and 0 in pre-conference game and had dropped from as high as #5 to #17 polls, lost their 6th game against just a single win in conference play and likely will drop out of the Top 25.

[PointGuard]

Cory McCreight, 1st Assistant Coach (Recruiting)

We were relieved to learn this week that 4-star PG Robbie Boston, our lone recruit this year who has an unimpressive GPA of 2.8, came through to score a 1010 on the SAT which exceeds our minimum required test score. Robbie is averaging 19.2 ppg and 8.3 apg for his Sedro-Woolley High School team in Washington State. We feel fortunate to have landed Robbie since both he and his parents told us that location was their top concern. Gonzaga and the University of Washington were very high on the list of schools he was interested in attending, so apparently we did some things right in getting him to commit to coming over 900 miles south of his home. Since we have no other scholarships to award this year, our recruiting efforts have concluded.

[PointGuard]

Nevada-Las Vegas Runnin’ Rebels (15-5, 5-2) @ Cal Poly Mustangs (11-9, 4-3)

San Luis Obispo Tribune

DEFENSE! DEFENSE!

The Cal Poly Mustangs again used a lock-down defense to roll over the favored Runnin’ Rebels from Nevada-Las Vegas. Cal Poly held UNLV to 28 first half points, but the Mustangs offense was absent without leave and scored just 23. But the starters and 5 subs combined to score 42 points in the 2nd half while Cal Poly’s D clamped down to only allow UNLV to score 19 second half points. Cal Poly’s 65-47 stomping of the Runnin’ Rebels was their 4th straight win. The 5-3 Mustangs have moved from a tie for last place to a tie for 2nd place in the Mountain West Conference. Only 6-2 Fresno State is above Cal Poly in the standings.

Coach Fred Aura said, “We’ve not been a high scoring team this season. To see our guys play such solid defense has been both exciting and fulfilling. A lot of the credit goes to my assistant coaches who have worked hard to train our guys in how to implement a D that can shut down our opponents.”

[PointGuard]

Cal Poly Mustangs (12-9, 5-3) @ Montana Grizzlies (15-7, 4-4)

David Williams, 2nd Assistant Coach (scouting)

Pre-game comments:

Montana played some very good opponents during their pre-conference schedule and came out of it with an impressive 11-3 record. Their unimpressive conference record is primarily due to going 1-3 on the road, but they’ve continued to be tough to beat at home. They’re led by C Jared Davis (14.0 ppg, 8.2 rpg); PG Chris Cockle (11.5 ppg, 4.6 apg); PF Eddie Slaughter (10.7 ppg, 7.0 rpg); and SF William Sharpe (9.1 ppg, 4.3 rpg). SG Kenneth Howard tore his ACL in the 10th game this season and has been replaced in the starting lineup by J.B. Beeson (6.9 ppg). The Grizzlies are an excellent shooting team, hitting 49% of their FG’s (14th best in Division 1) and 40% of their 3’s (7th best in Division 1). Even though our defense has been strong recently, it will be severely tested by Montana on their own court. We can win this, but it will take a Herculean effort and we’ll need to hit a higher percentage of our shots than we typically do.

Game Notes:

It took us 4-1/2 minutes to make our first FG and we trailed 8-1 at that point. But we fought back to score 10 straight points to lead by 3 with 13 minutes left in the half. We were up 19-10 at the midpoint of the half, primarily due to Jase Carroll knocking down four 3’s. We held a 33-23 lead at halftime, but it could even have been larger had we been able to hit our FT’s (we missed 9 of 11). But from the field we outshot the Grizzlies 52% to 28% so our pressure D definitely worked.

We held onto a double-digit lead until Montana got within 9 with 7 minutes left in the game. The closest the Grizzlies could get after that was 7 points. Even though Montana scored well in the final 10 minutes of the game, we held on and came away with a 73-64 upset victory. We did exactly what was necessary by hitting 50% of our FG’s, 41% of our 3’s, controlling the boards (+9), and playing good defense, especially during the first 30 minutes of the game.

SG Jase Carroll had a tremendous game with 21 points, 7 boards, 2 assists and 2 blocks. He was supported by SF/PF Lane Lynch who dropped in 14 points, and PG Jon Overton who had 12 points, 4 rebounds, and 4 assists.

That extends our win streak to 5! And with Fresno State losing to Utah State 75-56, we’re now in a 5-way tie for first place in the Mountain West Conference. But our next game is again on the road.