SAME FEDORA-NEW CROWN?

[PointGuard]

NCAA Tournament

Round 1:

#6 seed, #22 ranked Cal Poly Mustangs (25-7) vs #11 seed Arkansas Razorbacks (18-12)

CBN (College Basketball Network) Pre-Game Report

The game between 6th seed Cal Poly and #11 seed Arkansas begins in 15 minutes. Cal Poly dominated the Big West the entire season, and after winning 25 games this season, the Mustangs edged into the Top 25. That’s just about unheard of for a Big West team. During pre-conference play, they lost their only two games against ranked teams. But they travelled to Fayetteville where they knocked off the Arkansas Razorbacks 70-60 by playing solid defense and controlling the boards. Cal Poly isn’t a particularly good shooting team, hitting just 44% of their FG’s and a meager 32% of their 3’s. But their defense, which has allowed opponents an average of just 65 ppg, has carried them to many victories this season. The team has also been a beast on the boards, hauling down 36.6 rpg which is 31st best in Division 1. Coach Fred Aura took Towson and Boston College to new and unexpected heights and now has done the same for the Mustangs where under his tutelage Cal Poly has won 152 games and lost just 76 games, a .667 winning percentage. Aura is known for playing a deep bench. We’ll see if he does that or shortens the bench for tournament play. This is the 3rd consecutive trip to the Big Dance and 4th time in the past 5 seasons…but…they have yet to make it past the 2nd round.

The Razorbacks have won 4 of 8 games against Top 25 teams. They finished 3rd in the Southeastern Conference with a 12-6 record but got upset by Tennessee in the first round of the conference tourney. Four of their starters are averaging in double figures In his 12 years coaching at Arkansas, head coach Nigel Klein has a 275-174 (.612) record and has gotten the Razorbacks to the Big Dance 8 times, getting as far as the Final 4 once. . Even though they are a lower seed than Cal Poly, the oddsmakers have Arkansas favored by 1-1/2 points.

CBN (College Basketball Network) Halftime Report

It's halftime at Fiserve Forum in Milwaukee.

Top scorer Nikolos Ivelitsch played just 2 minutes before being relegated to the bench with 2 fouls. Cal Poly plagued with turnovers early in the first half but hot shooting kept them in the game. So even though the Mustangs made 11 turnovers and the Razorbacks’ SG T__ Watkins dropped in 11 points in the half, Cal Poly’s 68% shooting from the field have the Mustangs on top at the end of the half 41-38.

CBN (College Basketball Network) End of Game Report

After burning up the net in the first half, Cal Poly’s shooting went stone-cold early in the 2nd half. The Razorbacks took advantage to go on a 16-0 run that put them on top by 11 with 12 minutes remaining. The Mustangs slowly chipped away at that lead and with a minute left got within 2 when PG Scotty Lee nailed a baseline jumper. Arkansas was unable to convert. The Mustangs called a timeout but their designed play fizzled. The Razorbacks rebounded and brought it up court only to have the Mustangs’ SF Louis Taylor step into the passing lane and pick off a pass. He pushed the ball up to PF Rodney Boykin who threw down a slam that tied the game with 25 seconds remaining. Arkansas broke the press and worked the ball around and then inside where Boykin blocked their shot. Cal Poly recovered the ball and called a time out. But again the Mustangs were unable to get a bucket on their designed play and the game went to OT tied at 67-67. In the overtime with Cal Poly trailing by one point, C Calvis Barnes took the team on his broad shoulders and connected on 4 consecutive possessions to put the Mustangs up by 7 with 1:15 left. Cal Poly went on to win 79-70. After the game Coach Aura said, “I was proud of how our guys came back from 13 down to force the game into overtime. I think we just had a little more in the tank than the Razorbacks in the OT, but it really came down to Calvis (Barnes) just wanting the win so badly. He simply wouldn’t be denied.”

Calvis Barnes finished with 21 points and 6 rebounds. Scotty Lee had 12 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 steals. Danny Preston scored 11 and had 3 rebounds and 4 assists.

[PointGuard]

NCAA Tournament

Round 2:

#3 seed, #24 ranked Michigan Wolverines (24-12) vs #6 seed, #22 ranked Cal Poly Mustangs (26-7)

CBN (College Basketball Network) Pre-Game Report

A lot of people are wondering how the 24th ranked team can be awarded a #3 seed. Michigan has a storied past but has had 8 straight down years. So maybe the selection committee rewarded the Wolverines for their comeback season this year.

The Wolverines and the Mustangs are remarkably similar teams when you look at the team stats. Michigan has the edge in the quality of players they’ve recruited. The Wolverines took care of business in the first round by knocking off the Long Island Sharks 74-60 while Cal Poly had to come back late in the 2nd half to get to overtime and then stun the Arkansas Razorbacks in the OT to win 79-70. In Las Vegas, Michigan is listed as a 9-1/2 point favorite for this game.

CBN (College Basketball Network) Halftime Report

Michigan came out in beast mode and bludgeoned their way to an 18-6 lead. With the Mustangs having trouble putting the ball in the hoop, the Wolverines, led by their C Carl Stewart, expanded their lead to 31-12 with 6 minutes remaining in the half. Michigan never let up and at the break the Wolverines were in total control and led 43-22. Carl Stewart had 13 points and 9 rebounds in the first half. Michigan made 50% of their shots while Cal Poly could only connect on 28% of their FG attempts. The Wolverines also controlled the boards, 24-13. Coach Aura has a huge challenge in trying to figure out how to get his team back in this game.

CBN (College Basketball Network) End of Game Report

The Mustangs shot a little better in the 2nd half, but not nearly well enough to make a serious dent in the lead. But Cal Poly missed all 17 of their 3 point attempts in the game. Michigan cruised to a 71-48 drubbing of Cal Poly. Michigan was led by PG Aaron Moore’s 18 points along with C Carl Stewart's 17 points and 12 boards. Cal Poly’s SG Nikolos Ivelitsch had 14 points and 7 rebounds and C Calvis Barnes finished with 12 points and 5 rebounds.

[PointGuard]

Rob Benchley, Athletic Director

Our team had a great season even though they only made it to the 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament. UC Santa Barbara, which moved from the Big West to the West Coast Conference this season, was an 11 seed but beat 3 lower-seeded teams to reach the South Region championship in the Big Dance. They lost to #1 seed Arizona 86-78…pretty impressive effort by the Gauchos to reach the Elite 8 and give Arizona all they could handle.

Tournament Championship Games:

CIT: Wisconsin—84, Old Dominion—65

CBI: Brown—85, Boston College—81

NIT: Dayton—85, UNLV—76

NCAA: Mississippi State—85, Arizona—78

Awards:

Nikolos Ivelitsch was named to the Big West 1st Team All-Conference

Coach Fred Aura was named the Big West Coach of the Year

Assistant Coaches

1st Assistant Coach Bryan King decided he wanted more money, but more than we felt we could provide. He then wanted to shop other jobs so we released him from his contract. We hired a new 1st Assistant…Cory McCreight. He was most recently 1st Assistant at Rider after working his way up from 3rd Assistant there over a 13 year assistant coaching career. He’s an excellent recruiter. Bryan King was hired as the 1st Assistant at George Washington. We were then surprised when 2nd Assistant Coach Jody Hedde was hired out from under us by Syracuse as their 2nd Assistant. We were able to hire David Williams as our new 2nd Assistant who will handle our scouting. David comes to us from Louisiana Tech where he was their 3rd Assistant. Omari Aura will continue on as our 3rd Assistant Coach.

[PointGuard]

Cory McCreight, 1st Assistant Coach (Recruiting)

I’m happy to now be coaching at Cal Poly. Since we had filled all our scholarships for the coming season, I am preparing for the coming season and familiarizing myself with high school and junior college programs in California and the Western region of the U.S.

I think our 2 incoming recruits are excellent and will help improve our program:

PF DJ Morse is a 4-star recruit as the #104th highest ranked recruit. He scored 13.2 ppg and grabbed 9.0 rpg this past season. He’s an excellent shooter from both inside and outside. He’s also a very strong rebounder and has good passing skills.

SG Jase Carroll is a 3-star but as the 127th highest ranked recruit wasn’t far from being rated as a 4-star. He averaged 13.9 ppg, 5.1 rpg, and 4.5 apg this past season. He’s a good outside shooter, rebounds well and is an excellent passer. He’s extremely athletic.

[PointGuard]

Coach Frederick Aura

I had offers for head coaching jobs from 2 strong SEC schools, but decided to stay at Cal Poly. I’ll have 2 new assistant coaches and am looking forward to working with them…and of course, working with my son Omari as he develops his coaching skills. I’m also excited to develop our team further and see how they will do this coming year.

I’m no longer surprised when players transfer away from our program. This year we had 2 guys decide to look for greener pastures…PF Sam Ridnour and SG Ronnie Kirkland. Both didn’t play too much last season as freshmen and that undoubtedly contributed to their decision to leave since they were very unlikely to start this season. But both also didn’t mesh well with the rest of the team and that was likely the bigger reason for them to depart. Both have a lot of upside potential and were likely to provide us with depth. Therefore we will need to go after at least one solid interior player through the transfer portal. Since both Danny Preston and Scotty Lee…our PG duo…are seniors this year, it would also be nice if we could pick up a good PG. C/PF Brandon Bailey, who played extensively for us last season as a freshman, also considered transferring. Fortunately though, he opted to stay at Cal Poly.

Here’s how things went with this summer’s transfer portal:

We had a few transfer players initially interested in coming our way, but none of them were high on our radar. So that meant we needed to contact a bunch of players to see which ones we can entice. While I typically prefer to focus on sophomores who are transferring, we don’t have any junior class players this year on our roster, so if there’s a good junior, we might be more inclined to go after him than in previous years.

We contacted a lot of players early during the transfer portal period and then made a couple offers to players who’d shown some interest and those offers were accepted, thus filling all of our scholarships for this coming season. Here’s the transfer players we landed:

SG Jon Overton, 6-2 Soph from Fort Walton Beach, FL. As a freshman, Jon started every game until he broke his arm in early January. He averaged 9.8 ppg, 2.6 apg, 2.4 rpg, and 2.4 spg and hit 49% of his FG’s, 39% of his 3’s, and 86% of his FT’s. Obviously he’s a crack shooter, but he’s also a strong rebounder, good at stealing and shot blocking, and a very good passer and ball handler so can back up at PG, and is extremely athletic. He’ll definitely be competing for a starting role.

C Steve Hastings, 6-8 Jr from Mukogee, OK. Not highly rated, but while playing for North Dakota State Steve averaged 18.3 ppg and 6.9 rpg as a freshman and an amazing 28.4 ppg and 7.3 rpg as a sophomore, hitting 63% of his FG attempts. He was the Summit League Freshman Player of the Year and the league’s Player of the Year and 1st Team All-Conference both seasons he was there. He’s an excellent inside shooter and a strong defender. He’s an adequate rebounder. And he’s got a great personality that should help with team chemistry.

These two new additions will strengthen our team…and make choosing a starting lineup more challenging for me.

SG Ronnie Kirkland transferred to Vermont. I doubt he will get much more playing time for the Catamounts than he would have for us. He grew up with the moderate weather in the San Franciso Bay Area. Hopefully he will enjoy the winters in Vermont. Unfortunately, Sam Ridnour was not picked up by any Division 1 team which was extremely surprising to me. I believe he plans to transfer to a Division 2 school and he’ll likely be a mainstay there.

[PointGuard]

Malik Aura

It was a blast to be a starter for Milwaukee in the final stages of last season. Even though the Bucks management would have like to see me score more (I averaged 14.4 ppg during the time I was with the team), I think they were satisfied overall with my play. But we tanked in the playoffs, so that could mean some big changes during the offseason.

I’m going to spend as much time as possible with my family in California this summer. Omari is jacked to be coaching along with Dad. He’s been going with Tori for nearly a year now and the two seem to be a great pair. Devany finished her sophomore year and was a star on her high school basketball team. She’s a much better student than either Omari or I were in school, though. So it’s exciting to consider what her future holds and see how she molds it.

[PointGuard]

Cory McCreight, 1st Assistant Coach (Recruiting)

Time to get our recruiting effort in full swing. It’s going to be a big challenge since we have 6 seniors who will be graduating and thus leaving our team at the end of the coming season. In order to balance out our class structure within our roster, we’ll be trying to recruit a couple JC players out of the 6 scholarships we will have to offer. We’d like to recruit 3 guards, 2 big men, and the best recruit we can get without regard to what position he plays. We MAY leave one or two scholarships unfilled until spring to see if we can pick up talented recruits who don’t make commitments in the fall or winter.

In order to conserve money since we have so many recruits to go after, the only summer camp we’ll be attending will be the Las Vegas Revue. Our primary focus will be on California recruits and the secondarily we’ll be checking out western regional recruits.

[PointGuard]

Rob Benchley, Athletic Director

Fred Aura wanted me to schedule some tough opponents. While he’d like to play at home as much as possible, to get stronger opponents I had to agree to playing them on the road. So we’ll be playing away for most all of our pre-conference games. Here’s our pre-conference schedule:

@ Wake Forest
@ Butler
@ Air Force
@ Towson
AUBURN
@ Boston University
@ Marshall
@ Northwestern
Bahama Classic Tournament (Our opening game will be against Nevada)
ST. BONAVENTURE
@ Pacific

[PointGuard]

Cory McCreight, 1st Assistant Coach (Recruiting)

We got some very good recruits interested in us, but getting them HIGHLY interested was very difficult. We made some early offers to several guards and a couple big men and then beginning in September, Coach Aura did home visits that went well.

By mid-September we had landed:

SG Brandon Muckle, a 6-1 HS senior from Fresno, CA. Last season he averaged 14.9 ppg, 5.0 rpg, and 2.6 apg. He’s a 4-star player who is the 64th highest ranked recruit. He’s got outstanding passing skills and is an excellent outside shooter (who loves shooting 3’s) and rebounder plus he’s a solid defensive player. He’s a great leader and a hard worker. But, his GPA hasn’t been high which means he MAY have problems meeting our high SAT requirements.

PG Gary Van Dyke, a 6-1 HS senior from Laveen, AZ. He averaged 12.9 ppg, 3.0 rpg, 4.0 apg, and 1.3 spg as a junior last senior. He’s an adept passer and excellent ball handler and a very good outside shooter. He’s a 3-star recruit who’s presently ranked as the 179th top recruit. While not a leader, he doesn’t cause any problems.

Then by the first of October we had 3 more verbal acceptances of our scholarship offers:

C Lane Lynch, a 6-8 HS senior from Pavillion, WY who averaged 15.6 ppg, 10.4 rpg, 1.8 apg, 3.7 bpg, and 2.7 spg as a junior last season. He’s a 4-star recruit who’s ranked as the 79th best recruit. Outstanding rebounder, inside shooter, and shot blocker. Very strong defensively. A good passer. He was in the top 25 at the Las Vegas Revue and is a hard worker.

SG Will Cage, a 6-1 HS senior for Alturas, CA. As a junior last year he averaged 14.0 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 1.7 apg, and 1.7 spg. He also is a 4-star player who is ranked as the 95th top recruit. An excellent outside shooter and a very good passer who also plays defense well.

C Earl Burns, a 6-9 HS senior from Phoenix, AZ. He averaged 13.3 ppg, 10.4 rpg, 1.9 apg, 2.6 bpg, and 1.3 spg last season. He’s ranked as a 2-star player and ranked as the 535th top rhcruit, but we ave evaluated him much higher. He was a top 25 player at the Las Vegas Revue. He’s a great rebounder and an excellent inside shooter and can also shoot well from outside. He’s a very good shot blocker and is good defensively. I’d sure like to see him be one of the surprises coming out of this recruit class.

We have one other scholarship offer that is out there hanging, but he’s another 4-star recruit and I think he’s holding out for some blue-chip programs to make him a scholarship offer. So, now that it’s November, we’ll go into our “keep calling” mode now that fall practices have begun to try building interest in the remaining recruits we have on our list so that we’ll be able to make offer(s) this spring in case we need to do that.

[PointGuard]

Janeka Aura

Malik was correct…some big turnovers on the roster for the Milwaukee Bucks. But Malik is still with the team and is their starting SG. Milwaukee drafted a SG this summer and he'll back up Malik this season. Malik likes the guy but feels that the team’s targeted him to take over as starter, probably after apprenticing as a rookie this season. The pro game has been a real challenge for both of my sons with a series of ups and downs. Malik played well in the Bucks first two games this season. But he caught some sort of bug that slowed him during their last 3 games. Malik won’t admit that’s he’s not up to par, but Fred says he can tell by his play he’s not 100%. The rookie SG has done pretty well coming in off the bench…he’s a pretty sweet outside shooter but needs to work on his D. Even though it might mean losing his starting job, Malik is the type of person who I’m sure is working with the rookie to help him improve. Malik was very disappointed on how the Bucks went down early in the playoffs last season and is laser focused on helping the team go all the way this season. A new coach and new assistants, a bunch of new players…we’ll just have to see how they do.