The UCSB men’s basketball team led by as much as nine late in the first half, but “a lack of urgency” the rest of the way came back to bite them in the end, as the Gauchos dropped a 65-64 contest against UC Riverside Saturday night at the Thunderdome.
The loss snapped a nine-game win streak and dropped the Gauchos to 13-3 overall and 4-1 in the Big West. The Highlanders improved to 12-6 overall and 5-1 in conference play.
“It’s about urgency,” UCSB coach Joe Pasternack said. “We need to ratchet that engine up, that motor up, for 40 minutes. Right now we have a very laid-back situation and we got to ratchet this urgency up.
“I was afraid that it was going to take a loss after winning nine in a row to put this back in reality, but this was coming. Attitude is how you respond when something bad happens and we have to be able to respond.”
UCSB led the first-half rebounding battle, 16-15, but UC Riverside outclassed the home team over the final 20 minutes, out-boarding the Gauchos 17-8, including five offensive rebounds, all of which turned into points.
“Definitely the message after this game is rebounding, playing hard,” said senior forward Miles Norris. “We just allowed too many offensive rebounds. I think that hurt us a lot. They just played harder on those, they wanted the ball more.
“I gotta get on my team about that. That’s on me as well. I’m not perfect. Nobody’s perfect. But being a leader on a team, I gotta take accountability for that.”
It was also a tough shooting night for the Gauchos as they made just 2 of 15 on three-pointers.
Norris made the only two 3-pointers on the night. On the flip side, the Highlanders converted on 9 of 16 attempts.
“Our shots were just not falling. Shots aren’t going to fall every night. It’s going to come down to playing defense, rebounding and today we lost on that front,” Norris said.
“On a good day, we’re going to make shots, on a bad day, you still got to play defense and rebound to not end up with a loss.”
UCSB guard Ajare Sanni made a driving layup while fouled, then nailed the ensuing free throw, to give the Gauchos a 23-14 lead with 5:46 left to go in the first half.
That would be Santa Barbara’s last points until the final four seconds of the half. UCR went a 13-0 run to take a 27-23 lead.
A layup from Ajay Mitchell cut the deficit to two heading into halftime. Mitchell had a team-high 15 points.
Riverside’s run was kickstarted by back-to-back threes from sophomore forward Luke Turner. Ja Hartwell also had five points during the run. He finished with 16 points.
The Highlanders were led by graduate senior Kyle Owens, who scored 13 of his game-high 19 points in the first half to go along with 15 boards, eight of which came in the first 20 minutes.
“Kyle Owens is a great player. Man, kudos to him. He played so hard, he hit three threes and he was the best player on the court tonight,” Pasternack said.
The second half mostly belonged to UC Riverside. The Highlanders led by double digits consistently over the final eight minutes.
At the 3:09 mark, the Highlanders pushed the lead to 13.
The Gauchos finally pushed back and used a 9-0 run, capped off by a Norris three, to cut the lead down to 61-57 with 1:20 left.
After a UCR bucket, Mitchell drew a foul on a layup and made a free throw to make it 63-60 with about 40 seconds left.
From there, the Highlanders fouled UCSB before any 3-point attempt.
Down by one, UCSB’s Koat Keat Tong came up with a steal with 1.8 seconds left about 60 feet from the basket. The big man heaved a last shot that hit the backboard and the rim, but didn’t fall through.
“We had urgency the last 3:48,” said Pasternack. “We had no urgency unfortunately for almost 40 minutes,” Pasternack said.
“We were on a nine-game winning streak and, I think, fat, dumb and happy. We thought we could just show up, and you can’t just show up.”
UCSB has a short turnaround before playing its next Big West game on Monday at UC Irvine.