The UCSB men’s basketball team secured yet another record during the Joe Pasternack era and clinched a share of the Big West regular season title Saturday after the Gauchos blew out visiting Hawaii 81-61, sending its seniors home with one last memory before the tournament on Thursday.
“Cutting down those nets here after the game was special,” senior forward Miles Norris said after the game.
“I wanted to make sure we got that done for all the guys playing. We knew what we had at stake. But we’re not comfortable. Monday we go to Vegas and take that a game at a time, but we’re still not there right now. We still got more to prove.”
With the win, the Gauchos finish the regular season boasting a 24-7 overall mark, the 24 wins being the most ever in a regular season for the program. The 15-5 conference record was good enough for UCSB to finish tied for first with UC Irvine, who also won Saturday.
Despite sharing the regular season title, UC Irvine will have the No. 1 seed in the tournament while UCSB will hold the No. 2 seed and will face the winner of the No. 7 and No. 10 seed game to be played Tuesday.
“It feels good just finishing the job and getting one of those top spots, but we still haven’t won the tournament,” Norris said. “That’s our main goal, winning in Vegas and getting to the NCAA tournament, so we’re still chasing that. We’re still gonna be locked into that.”
Still, for the Gauchos to be at this point says a lot about the team, head coach Joe Pasternack said.
UCSB came into its penultimate home contest of the season against Long Beach State holding a 3-game losing streak and various injuries.
In fact, in that Long Beach State matchup, the Gauchos suited just eight scholarship players, something Pasternack said he’s never seen.
Still, UCSB won that game, then won a road game at UC San Diego and gutted out a 3-point win at UC Davis before rounding out the regular season with a blowout win against Hawaii.
“In the beginning of the year, we came up with one word — it was ‘attitude.’ That means what you do, how you respond when your back is against the wall,” Pasternack said.
“Our guys, with their back against the wall in the Long Beach State game, really rose up to the occasion. It was unbelievable. And that started this whole process and I thought how we competed in that game with our backs against the wall really propelled us.”
Asked about how it feels to win the regular season title, the second in his tenure at UCSB, Pasternack said it’s something he will “never take for granted.”
“I haven’t done it every year so I don’t take it for granted,” Pasternack said.
The Gauchos had no trouble with Hawaii Saturday night.
Hawaii never led throughout the 40-minute contest and within the first four minutes, the Gauchos went on a 10-2 run to start the night.
From there, UCSB never had much trouble. Once the team got the lead past 10, it never really got below that number.
A 3-pointer from senior guard Calvin Wishart with 11:21 remaining in the first half gave UCSB a 21-10 lead.
Later in the first half, up 10, Wishart knocked down back-to-back 3s in between a Hawaii layup to give the Gauchos a commanding 35-21 lead. UCSB would eventually take a 46-26 lead into the break.
Wishart led the way in that first half, scoring 15 points and wowing the crowd with every made shot.
“The overall experience, the life here, has meant so much,” Wishart said. “I want to live here and now, on top of all of that, the basketball experience of being able to cut down nets in the T-dome tonight was special.”
Asked about how the team has been playing in the last four games, Wishart believes they are just playing looser, and thus knocking down more shots and gaining that momentum needed to win a championship.
“Guys are playing a little bit more relaxed. The mood in the locker room is passion, urgent, and desperate but as long as we take care of that, we can kind of play relaxed,” Wishart said.
“We trust each other.”
That trust was shown on Saturday, as the Gauchos recorded 21 assists to just four turnovers.
The lowest the lead got down to in the second half was 14.
In the final minute, UCSB called a timeout to give a chance for three of its seniors, Wishart, Norris and Andre Kelly, to get one final standing ovation from the crowd.
Norris, who finished with 18 points and 10 rebounds, said he was almost brought to tears by the moment while Wishart said he was happy and appreciative of the moment — adding that a lot of his loved ones flew in from Minnesota for his final game.
Pasternack was also complimentary of all his seniors after the game, including Josh Pierre-Louis and Ajare Sanni, who have both been battling injuries, but he gave special praise to Wishart and Norris.
The former for transitioning his entire game and becoming an all-around player the team can rely on, while the latter for being a superior talent, one he believes can reach the NBA, and embracing rebounding and defense as much as knocking down shots.
“This is just a special, special team that we’ve had this year, and finishing off with attitude, how we responded when we really went down unbelievable adversity. They are special,” Pasternack said.
Asked about how the team will prepare differently for the Big West tournament, Pasternack said nothing changes, even as the team looks to bounce back from its devastating loss to Long Beach State in last year’s tournament run.
“We have to honor the process and we’re gonna have our same process because that’s the only way I know how to be successful. When you start thinking about championships, that’s when you get in trouble,” Pasternack said.
“Honor the process and the results will take care of themselves.”