6th seed Texas-San Antonio Roadrunners (3-1) vs #4 seed Cal Poly Mustangs (4-0) in Championship Game of Cabo Challenge Tournament
Coach Frederick Aura
I’m ecstatic to have us make it to the championship game of the Cabo Challenge. The guys really wanted it also and showed that by how they came back in the 2nd half to overtake South Carolina to get us here.
I didn’t know how this team would shake out. While we’re still evaluating the entire roster, I gotta tell ya, I’m damned happy with what the 5 guys we are starting have done thus far. And our bench players are contributing as well. We definitely still have a ways to go to become the strong team we all hope to have this season.
Our opponent, Texas-San Antonio, is highly underrated. And that means the Roadrunners have the ability to rise up and slap favorites and slap hard enough to pull out unexpected victories. I’m telling our guys that we need to play hard and play hard the entire 40 minutes against these guys. Thus far their guards, Lawson and Kapono, have carried their team.
We got turnovers on the Roadrunners’ first 3 possessions and scored after each one, giving us a 6-0 lead in just the first minute of play. After 4 minutes of play, all 5 of our starters had scored and we were on top 14-6. But I got on our guys during the media timeout to try to make sure they continued to be aggressive and to not let the Roadrunners turn things around and overtake us. The refs were calling things tight so I decided to work my bench in quicker than normal to avoid our starters getting into foul trouble. We did pretty well until the Roadrunners got hot late in the half. Our double-digit lead was reduce to 5 with 6 minutes left in the half and then to 2 with 1-1/2 minutes til halftime. We held a very tenuous 43-40 lead when we left the court to go to the locker room where I set up a tighter defense.
Texas-San Antonio scored on their first possession to cut our lead to a single point. SG Nikolos Ivelitsch was whistled for his 3rd foul with 19 minutes left in the game which meant our top scorer was relegated to the bench. We quickly reestablished an 8 point lead. But the pesky Roadrunners cut it back to 1 with 12 minutes remaining. Again we pulled away to go up 64-53 with 7 minutes left. The Roadrunners hung in as did we. And we came away with an 82-74 victory to pick up the Championship Trophy of the Cabo Classic. It wasn’t a particularly strong effort on our part but good enough to get the win.
Our scoring was spread throughout our lineup with C Dekker Chambers, PG Danny Preston and SG Nikolos Iletisch each putting 12 points on the board, SG Bryan Taylor and PF Darcel Aygar both scoring 11 points, PF Victor Collier hitting for 11 points, and SF Trey Small adding 9 points, 4 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steals and 3 blocks.