Mustangs Tame the Tigers for 10th straight Big West win at Mott

On Thursday, Cal Poly held off a second-half run by Pacific and emerged with a 67-62 win over the second place team in the Big West. Cal Poly has now beaten each of the top four teams in the conference — Long Beach State, Pacific, Irvine, and Hawai’i and are the only Big West team to do so. The Mustangs sit tied for fourth in the conference with a 6-5 record (10-11 overall).

Chris Eversley netted a home double-double in Cal Poly’s 10th straight conference win at Mott. By Owen Main

It’s something I’ve seen this year, but really hit home last night — the Cal Poly players really love this game, especially when they play at home. While road teams come into Mott Gym with a very serious attitude — grimacing and rarely cracking a smile — the Mustangs play with a little more joy. This is especially evident in Chris Eversley, whose head wiggle and smile are becoming staples of seemingly every Mustang run. It’s even carrying over to sharpshooters Kyle Odister, Reese Morgan, and Dylan Royer, all of whom flashed their respective pearly whites at some point in last night’s game.

What’s with this home/road split? Cal Poly is now 5-0 at home in Big West play (they’ve won their last 10 conference games dating back to last year), but 1-5 on the road this year. Long Beach State is the only team with a better current home win streak (well into the 20’s) in the conference. The big test and dominant storyline, at least in my opinion, will be whether the Mustangs can take that energy and exuberance they play with in Mott and translate it to the Honda Center in March.

As teams key on Cal Poly’s 3-point shooting game, the Mustangs showed they can still score in spurts. After scoring 45 and 48 points in two games last weekend, Cal Poly scored only 20 points in the first half on Thursday. In the second half, though, shots started falling. The Mustangs put up 47 points in the second half, making 5-7 three-pointers to grab the lead and hold on. They’ll need more than one spurt at the end of the year and it will be interesting to see if consistently good offense for a number of games in a row is something that this team can accomplish against Big West Conference opponents. Joe Callero called his team “An ‘A’ defensively,” but he also said (and I’m paraphrasing) that defense can get you in position to be in close games, but offense is what wins championships.

Pacific head coach Bob Thomason coached his last game in Mott Gym last night. Thomason is the all-time winningest coach in Big West history. He started at UOP in 1988, probably before any of his players were born. Most notably, he coached Michael Olowokandi, the number-1 pick in the 1998 NBA draft to the Los Angeles Clippers.

Photos by Owen Main

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Some highlights via www.gopoly.com