UC Santa Barbara basketball coach Joe Pasternack was on the run again, his mind working as hard as his legs as he put Friday’s season-ending basketball defeat behind him with a Saturday morning jog.
He was plotting the next steps for his Gauchos program when he ran into a familiar face — and the suggestion of a more scenic route.
“A friend of my family asked, ‘Joe, are you going to Hawai‘i over spring break?’” he said. “I laughed. I said, ‘It doesn’t work like that.’
“It actually gets more intense when the season ends, getting your roster correct and planning and everything else. I turned the page right after that game.”
That game and the season both ended when Jadon Jones’ buzzer-beating three-pointer capped a furious rally for Long Beach State and dealt the Gauchos a 67-64 defeat in the semifinals of the Big West Conference Tournament in Henderson, Nevada.
But UCSB’s program remained very much up in the air even after Jones’ shot had dropped through the net. The NCAA has created its own version of suspended animation, offering every basketball player an extra season of eligibility because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Four of the five Gauchos that Pasternack had honored just a week earlier on Senior Night — even four-time all-leaguer Amadou Sow — could play a fifth season.
“I think this is the first time in the history of college basketball where you didn’t count a year … last season,” Pasternack said.
“Robinson (Idehen, a 6-foot-10 center) has exhausted his eligibility — he’s getting his grad degree this year, so he is gone — but the COVID year allows the other guys to come back in all scenarios.”
Professional opportunities and the stringent admission requirements for graduate school make this no slam dunk. Pasternack still needs to learn the paths of such graduating all-leaguers as Sow and Miles Norris, who have represented his starting front line ever since his NCAA Tournament season of 2021.
Sow ranks sixth on UCSB’s career scoring list with 1,620 career points. He could easily pass Orlando Johnson’s school record of 1,825 with a fifth season.
It would create an interesting question for the school’s history books. Does the extra year require the Gauchos to put a Roger Maris-like asterisk next to such a Babe Ruthian number?
But that’s not what’s been churning inside Pasternack’s ever-active head this last week.
“What we’ll do is meet individually with every single player, talk to each of the players and their families in the next 48 hours, and get a pulse on every individual and where they are with everything,” he said. “Obviously, we’re recruiting, as well. That’s what we have to do.
“We’ll meet with our coaching staff. Evaluate our program. It’s always about improvement and getting 1% better. That’s kind of where we’re at right now.”
It leaves him with no idea how many scholarships he’ll have available for next month’s spring signing period. The post-season pursuit for recruits, however, has already begun.
“One of my assistants, Ben Tucker, is in Phoenix today for the prep school tournament, and we’ll be going to the junior college nationals,” Pasternack said. “We’ll be hitting the road pretty hard here.”
The Gauchos already have two four-star recruits committed for next season.
Zach Harvey, a 6-foot-6 junior who played at Sow’s former school of Prolific Prep, has already been on campus after transferring to UCSB from Cincinnati. Pasternack had big plans for him this season until he was slowed by injuries to both a knee and an ankle.
“He’s shooting right now, and he’s working out,” Pasternack said. “Zach is coming off two major surgeries, so we really want to watch his rehab to see when he’ll be at full strength, and then we’ll know more.”
Koat Keat Tong, who was rated among the nation’s top 100 high school players by Prep Hoops, signed with UCSB last fall just as he was starting a prolific senior season at Irvine’s Crean Lutheran.
“He’s a 6-10 young man from the Sudan,” Pasternack said. “That’s one big guy we have coming in.
“For us in recruiting right now, we really want to assess our team first and kind of see exactly where we stand and move on from there.”
His backcourt is already loaded with veterans such as Ajare Sanni (10.2 points per game), Josh Pierre-Louis (8.8) and Calvin Wishart (7.0).
Freshman point guard Ajay Mitchell (11.6), meanwhile, became UCSB’s first Big West Freshman of the Year since current Miami Heat star Gabe Vincent won the award in 2015.
“Ajay is a wonderful young man and earned everybody’s respect in the conference, winning second-team all-conference,” Pasternack said. “He’s earned our coaches’ respect, our players’ respect.
“He’s checked the box in every area: off the court, on the court, he’s done what he’s supposed to do. Academically he’s done a great job. We’re just very excited for Ajay’s future.”
He also has big plans for another freshman guard, Cole Anderson, who shot 40.4% from the three-point line this season in a reserve role.
“Cole is going to be a terrific player,” Pasternack said. “He, like Ajay, checks the boxes in all areas.
“He’s a wonderful human being, is from a great family, terrific student, loves the game of basketball, and just wants to get better. His improvement defensively this year, from when he got here to the end, was tremendous.
“I’m really excited about the future of Cole Anderson.”
And comforted to at least have part of the map now plotted for Gaucho basketball.
— Noozhawk sports columnist Mark Patton is a longtime local sports writer. Contact him at sports@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook. The opinions expressed are his own.