Gauchos Drive Their Way To Big West Men’s Basketball Tournament Final

HENDERSON, Nev. — The payoff was big when UC Santa Barbara went small on Friday night.

A perimeter approach loosened up the offense enough for the Gauchos to rally for a 92-87 victory over UC Riverside in the semifinals of the Big West Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament at the Dollar Loan Center.

“For us, it’s all about urgency,” UCSB coach Joe Pasternack said.

The victory puts the second-seeded Gauchos (26-7) into Saturday’s championship game against No. 4 seed Cal State Fullerton (20-12). The game, which will be televised by ESPN2, will tip off at 6:30 p.m. at the Dollar Loan Center. The winner will gain an automatic berth for next week’s NCAA Tournament.

“All I was thinking about was just winning,” said Ajay Mitchell, who matched his season-high with a 28-point performance. “We were one game away from the championship, so that’s all I was worried about.”

He made 9-of-14 shots and 10-of-13 free throws. He also had a game-seven assists and two steals.

Fullerton won its eighth-straight game with an 83-80 victory over top-seeded UC Irvine (23-11) in Friday’s other semifinal. The Titans were the last team to beat UCSB, recording a 74-60 victory at the Thunderdome on Feb. 20. The Gauchos have won six consecutive games since then.

The streak looked in doubt after UCSB missed six of its first seven shots. Riverside made a trio of three-pointers during the first five minutes, the last two by Flynn Cameron, to jump ahead 13-2.

“They were hitting some unbelievable threes,” Pasternack said. “They’re the best three-point shooting team in the league — that’s what they do. I mean, hands-in-their-face, challenging shots.

“But our guys just kept fighting back, digging down deep.”

Things turned around for the Gauchos when center Andre Kelly’s foul trouble produced an unexpected silver lining.

“(Miles) Norris is usually at the four,” Riverside coach Mike Magpayo pointed out. “When they put Norris at the five, it spread us out, and that’s when we gave up driving lanes.”

The Gauchos did stay big for a bit longer, bringing little-used center Evans Kipruto off the bench with good effect. He dunked after catching a drop-off pass from Josh Pierre-Louis and added a layup less than a minute later. He had a career-high six points by halftime.

Pierre-Louis, who was snubbed in the coaches’ All-Big West voting, scored a season-high 20 points on 8-for-13 shooting. He also had five assists and two steals.

“I’ve got a chip on my shoulder, of course, but we don’t play for awards,” Pierre-Louis said. “We play to win as a team. All I’m worried about is winning.

“Awards this, awards that … At the end of the day, as long we win, that’s all I’m worried about … I like winning.”

When the Gauchos went small, Cole Anderson hit a corner three off another assist by Pierre-Louis. The bonus basket reduced their deficit to 18-14 with 12:10 left in the first half.

The Gauchos shot 53.3% from three for the game (8-for-15).

“That was a tipping point,” Magpayo said of UCSB’s long-range shooting. “They’re the No. 1 offense in the league for a reason, efficiency-wise.

“They have an excellent point guard, player of the year Ajay Mitchell, and they usually surround him with shooters.”

The Highlanders responded with a three of their own — this time by Jamal Hartwell II — and Mitchell’s inadvertant tip-in of Cameron’s missed shot to get their lead up to 23-14.

But the Gauchos scored the game’s next 12 points in an outburst that took just two minutes and 40 seconds.

Norris got it started when he found Mitchell cutting to the basket with a pass from the high post. Norris hooked in a baseline shot just 30 seconds later.

Pierre-Louis kept the rally going with a fast-break layup off Mitchell’s pass. Less than a minute later, while nearly losing the ball on a slash through the key, he fed freshman Matija Belic for his first three-pointer of the season.

“It was his best game since he was at Santa Barbara,” Pasternack said of Pierre-Louis. “He was so locked in defensively, offensively. He was awesome.”

Belic, pressed into duty because of an injury to starting guard Ajare Sanni, also finished with a season-high eight points during 16 minutes of action.

“Matija is seasoned player,” Pasternack said. “He’s played a lot of basketball in Serbia and has the greatest attitude in the world.

“He didn’t play at all this year, and then had some injuries, and his attitude has been unbelievable. He came out and did what he does every single day in practice.

“I tell our players all the time that, ‘You have 130 practices and 31 games. What you have to do is honor the process every day because when your name is called, you have to be able to take advantage of it.’”

Driving three-point plays by both Mitchell and Norris kept the Gauchos ahead by four points.

But Riverside, which had gone more than eight minutes without making a three, hit three more in the final 3:12 of the first half.

Cameron, who was 4-for-5 from three in the first half, hit the last one at the buzzer to put the Highlanders ahead 42-39. He led all scorers with 31 points, making 5-of-8 threes, and also had a team-high six assists.

Zyon Pullin added 24 points and five assists. Freshman center Lachlan Olbrich contributed 12 points and led Riverside with seven rebounds before fouling out while trying to stop the Gauchos’ penetration.

“We fouled a lot today, and that’s been our Achilles heel all year,” Magpayo said. “We fouled in crucial situations and put them on the line.”

UCSB, which shot 57.4% from the floor, also made 22-of-30 free throws.

Riverside shot an even 50% and nearly matched the Gauchos at the foul line, 21-for-24. But after the Highlanders made 8-of-14 threes in the first half, UCSB held them to just 2-for-7 the rest of the way.

UCSB reclaimed the lead early in the second half, 51-48, when threes by Calvin Wishart and Norris sandwiched a driving, three-point play by Mitchell.

Norris, who didn’t get a look from three in the first half, made all three of the long bombs he attempted in the second half. He scored 11 of his 16 points after the intermission and also finished with six rebounds.

“Miles Norris really played excellent,” Pasternack said. “He had to play out of position when Andre got into foul trouble.”

Belic’s second three, coming from the left corner off a driving pass from Mitchell, nudged UCSB’s lead to 60-56 just after the midway point of the second half.

Mitchell and Pierre-Louis explored driving lanes the rest of the game. Pierre-Louis’ aggression finally caught up to him when he fouled out with a charging violation with 3:44 remaining.

“When I fouled out, I just came to the bench screaming, ‘Attitude! Attitude! Attitude! Move on to the next play!’” Pierre-Louis said. “I have a gold-fish memory and support my team from the bench.

“I didn’t really think anything bad about it because I knew my team had me. And anybody else who was next up, they knew they had to step up.”

Mitchell kept beating the Highlanders to the rim. He nearly matched the big finish of his 24-point performance in Thursday’s quarterfinal against Cal Poly when he scored 18 points of his total in the final 12 minutes.

He netted 13 in in Friday’s final 10 minutes. They included a three-point play which gave the Gauchos their biggest lead of 80-71 with 2:03 to go.

“With the flow of the game, I just get to my moves,” Mitchell said.

Riverside forced the action down the stretch, as well. The Highlanders drew three fouls in a 60-second span and made all seven free throws — five by Cameron.

Norris kept his composure for UCSB, however, by breaking the Highlanders’ full-court press with a half-court pass to Belic for a layup. Norris then scored the Gauchos’ next two points from the foul line to get their lead to 86-80 with 40 seconds to go.

Wil Tattersall gave Riverside hope, 86-83, by making a three with 28 seconds left. The Highlanders’ press also forced Mitchell into his second traveling violation within a span of 42 seconds.

But Wishart pulled down a missed three by Vladimer Slaridze — his sixth rebound of the game — and made two free throws to get the lead to five points.

UCSB answered two unopposed layups by Pullin with free throws — two by Anderson and two by Mitchell — to close out the win in the final 8.7 seconds.

“It was an offensive game,” Magpayo said.” Both teams were scoring. They just scored a little more than us in the second half.”