This weekend, the Triton men’s basketball team provided two extremely entertaining games for a home crowd, following up a huge 79-46 win over Cal State Dominguez Hills on Jan. 20 with an 83-79 overtime win against Cal Poly Pomona on Jan. 21. UCSD improved its record to 7-9 overall and evened up its California Collegiate Athletic Association mark at 4-4.
On Jan. 21, the Tritons came out of the gates strong, holding the defending CCAA co-champs and West Region champion Broncos to only six points during the first 10 1/2 minutes of the game and taking a double-digit lead. Sophomore guard Clint Allard led the first-half attack with 11 points before halftime. The Broncos would not give up and came storming back to tie the game up at 24 with three minutes, 55 seconds left to play in the first half.
“Pomona is a good team,” head coach Bill Carr said. “They’ve got some veteran guys. I knew they were going to come back on us and [the team] knew it.”
Despite losing the big lead, the Tritons were up by four again soon after, until Pomona’s Jonathon Boyd was fouled on a three-point attempt and made all three free throws. The Broncos went into halftime holding a 33-32 lead. Rather than allow the turn of events to completely silence the team, the Tritons came back out in the second half with the large crowd even louder and the team ready to bounce back.
“We’ve got a team of competitors,” Carr said. “They do this in practice every day, but they showed a lot of heart coming off back-to-back games.”
That heart was evident as the two teams battled the entire second half. The Tritons’ seven-point lead early in the period would be the largest for either team in the entire game. After gaining a 44-43 advantage at 11:58, the Tritons, with the fans steadily supporting their effort, would hold onto the lead for most of the half.
“We knew the crowd was into it, and when the fans are into it, we’re going to be into it,” senior guard Odioh Odiye said.
But, the momentum took a sudden shift as the Broncos’ leading scorer Dion Cook stole and dunked the ball to give Pomona a 66-64 lead and quiet RIMAC Arena with just over 2:30 left to play. However, the silence was short-lived, as UCSD responded by getting the ball into the hands of long-distance specialist junior guard Robby Peters, who did not disappoint, nailing a huge three-pointer that gave the lead back to the Tritons. After the Broncos responded with a three of their own, it was Peters again, nailing a jumper in the lane with hands in his face to give the Tritons a 70-69 advantage with one minute left to play.
“I’m thinking, ‘We’ve got to win this game,’” Peters said.
The Broncos also felt as if they had to win the game, converting three of four free throws to retake the lead at 72-70 with only 13 seconds left to play. After the inbounds off the free throw, Odiye got the ball near half-court. He dribbled furiously down the court, paused briefly near the top of the key, and then drove to the basket, converting a pressure-packed lay-up and sending all Triton fans in attendance into a frenzy.
“Originally, we were supposed to get the ball to another player, but [Cal Poly Pomona] had him covered,” Odiye said. “I saw I had open real estate, so I just took it. I knew we didn’t have much time so I [hoped] to either get fouled or make the lay-up, and I made the lay-up.”
After a missed three-pointer by Cook at the buzzer, the teams headed for overtime in a game nobody was ready to see end. Once in the extra period, it would be Allard and freshman forward Henry Patterson who stepped up their game. Allard scored the first four points of overtime on a lay-up and two free throws. Then, on consecutive trips to the line, Patterson converted three of his four chances to give UCSD a 79-77 advantage. Although he has struggled with his free-throw shooting so far this season, Patterson was impressive on Jan. 21, going 8-of-12 and proving clutch by making the ones that mattered most.
“I’ve been practicing at free throws all week long just for that moment,” Patterson said. When asked whether his CCAA-leading field-goal percentage, struggles at the line and tendency to come through in the clutch made him San Diego’s Shaquille O’Neal, Patterson laughed off the comparison.
“I wouldn’t say all that,” he said. “I’m San Diego’s Henry Patterson, let’s put it that way.”
However, it was Peters, jokingly embracing his place as the new “Big-Shot Rob,” who again proved to make the difference. After a lay-up from Bronco Melvyn Nicholson tied the game at 79 with under a minute to play, the ball again came to Peters, this time in the court with pressure coming at him. Peters shot the ball over the Bronco defense, hitting another big three and giving UCSD an 82-79 lead. Odiye sealed the game with a free throw before rebounding his miss on the second shot and dribbling out the game in front of a Triton crowd, whose cheers drowned out even the UCSD band, with fans running to the court to form a victory tunnel for the Triton players.
Allard’s 19 points led four Tritons in double digits, including Patterson with 16 points and a game-high nine rebounds, and 13 and 10 points off the bench from Peters and freshman guard Shane Poppen, respectively. As a team, the Tritons forced six more turnovers than the 16 they committed and shot a strong 54.5 percent from the field.
“I’ve been in some good [games], but this has got to be number one,” Peters said.
Less than two weeks after setting a new UCSD record for margin of victory in CCAA play with a 20-point win over Chico State, the Tritons raised the bar even higher, defeating Cal State Dominguez Hills by 33 points on Jan. 20. After needing a three-pointer at the buzzer last year to defeat the Toros, UCSD never allowed the possibility of that happening again, scoring the first five points of the contest and never trailing in the game.
The Tritons gained their first double-digit lead just 11 minutes into the game as Odiye knocked down a three-pointer to give UCSD a 24-14 advantage.
The Toros would not be within single digits the rest of the game, as the Tritons refused to relent on either end of the court, connecting on nine first-half three-pointers, five from Peters, and keeping the defensive pressure intact as they took a 47-24 lead into the half.
The second half proved much of the same, as Cal State Dominguez Hills would not get closer than 20 points. The margin would go to 30 at the 5:52 mark on a Patterson lay-up off an assist by sophomore guard Jason Bull. Bull’s lay-up with 1:13 left in the game would provide the final margin of victory and UCSD’s largest lead.
The Tritons had four players score in double digits, led by Patterson with 19 points on 9-of-11 shooting from the field. The freshman forward’s game was impressive across the board as he also accumulated four assists and game highs of six rebounds and five steals.
“I felt good all night,” Patterson said of his performance. “I didn’t feel flat at all. We just rode the wave of the crowd. We just used their energy as a positive in the game.”
Odiye and Peters each had 15 points, while sophomore guard Andrew Hatch, in his first game back in the startling lineup since a December knee injury, had 12 points, three rebounds, three steals and a game-high seven assists. Conversely, the Toros had only one player score in double figures, with center Trevon Bryant leading his team with 15 points on 6-of-7 shooting from the field.
As a team, UCSD shot an impressive 58.9 percent from the field, including 60.9 percent in the second half despite having a comfortable advantage. The Toros were held to 41.5 percent from the field and never hit a three-pointer all game. The Triton defense was also able to force 21 Dominguez Hills turnovers, including 14 Triton steals.
“We don’t win these two games this weekend without the baseball team in the stands and all the other students that were here,” Carr said. “It was phenomenal.”
The Tritons will now try to continue their phenomenal play. UCSD returns to the road for its next three games, with matchups against Sonoma State on Jan. 27, San Francisco State on Jan. 28 and Chapman University on Jan. 31.
