Junior guard Calvin Wishart erupted for 23 first-half points and the UC Santa Barbara men’s basketball team outpaced Pepperdine in the second half to win the nonconference contest, 86-74, Friday night at the Thunderdome.
The Gauchos improve to 4-2 on the season, 4-1 at the Thunderdome, and avenge their 70-62 loss against the University of Texas, Arlington on Monday night. The Waves fall to 2-8 overall.
“We weren’t mentally ready on Monday and like I said on Monday night, we can’t show up with Santa Barbara on our jerseys and expect to win,” head coach Joe Pasternack said.
“The toughest mentally prepared team will always win, the team that defends and rebounds will always win.”
Wishart, a transfer from Georgia Southern, scored a career-high 23 points, all of which came in the first half on a perfect shooting.
He was 5 for 5 from the field, 4-4 from 3-point range and 9-9 from the free-throw line.
“It was just taking what they gave me really and not trying to force anything,” Wishart said.
“I was able to just get open and knock some shots down.”
The Gauchos needed every one of Wishart’s points as the team struggled to slow down Pepperdine’s offense in the first half.
The Waves collected nine offensive rebounds and shot 45% from the field and 40% from the 3-point line to hang in with the home team.
Pepperdine led 12-6 with 13 minutes left in the first half, but an 8-2 run by the Gauchos, which included six straight from Wishart, allowed them to tie the game up at 14-14.
Wishart erupted with three consecutive three-pointers, while senior forward Miles Norris chipped in a free throw to again tie the contest at 26-26.
Senior forward Jay Nagle knocked down his only shot of the contest, a 3-pointer from the right corner, to give UCSB a 29-26 lead.
Wishart knocked down his final three-pointer of the half at the 3:22 mark, extending the Gauchos’ lead to five.
Pepperdine then closed the half strong, goig on a 9-4 run, including a buzzer beater by freshman guard Mike Mitchell Jr., to go into the half tied at 41.
Wishart, who came off the bench for the second consecutive contest, said he likes coming off the bench and seeing “the flow” of the game.
“Being able to give a spark is always a good thing,” he said. “Being able to see how the game is flowing, if there’s a slow start, it’s our job to come in and give a spark, so it was good to contribute that.”
In the second half, Wishart went 0-1 from the field, but the rest of the roster stepped up on both sides of the ball to take over the contest.
Norris, who was in foul trouble in the first half with two fouls, collected six of his nine rebounds and scored 10 of his 13 total points in the final 20 minutes.
“I came out slowly in the first half, got a little bit of foul trouble, so I knew I just wanted to come out in the second half and play hard and do whatever I had to to help the team win,” Norris said.
Wishart attempted just one shot in the second half, a missed floated with about a minute left in the contest, but he collected one rebound and dished out two of his three assists to help the team score 45 points in the final 20 minutes.
“The defense was going to suction to me in the second half and other guys were going to get open, so that’s how that first half benefitted us,” he said.
Redshirt junior guard Ajare Sanni scored 11 points in the second half, while senior forward Amadou Sow scored nine of his 11 points in the second half. Sanni finished with 12 points.
Junior guard Josh Pierre-Louis finished the contest with 10 points, five in the second half, to give the Gauchos five double digit scorers on the night.
As a team, UCSB outrebounded Pepperdine 24-14 in the final frame, outshot them 50% to 41% and made 76% of its free throws compared to the Waves’ 33%.
“I thought our guys really grinded it out every single possession (in the second half), it was really a growing-up stage for this team,” Pasternack said.
“We have new guys in our program, especially at the guard position, so it takes time to really understand our system and we’re just six games in. We’re so early in the season, but I thought our guys really dug deep and competed on every possession and we didn’t do that in the first half.”
Trailing 45-41 to start the second half, the Gauchos used a 24-7 run over a six minute span to build a 13-point lead at 65-52.
From there, Pepperdine threatened a few times, cutting the lead down to as little as six with 10 minutes left, but never got any closer, as UCSB continually answered both on the boards and in the score column.
“We had to bounce back definitely from the last game. Every guy on the team I know really hates losing, so it was good to get away from that loss and play hard as a team, play good as a team and just get this win today,” Norris said.
UCSB will finish its five-game homestand Sunday at 1 p.m. as the team will host Cal Lutheran as the Thunderdome.