An oddity happened in the second half of the close game between Cal Poly and Cal State Fullerton last Thursday night. With Cal State Fullerton up by five points with 1:07 to play in the game, Joel Awich was fouled going up for a dunk. The official make a fisted chop signal, that seemed to signal the basket counting. As Awich slammed the ball home, a Fullerton player’s hand/fist came from under the hoop and popped the ball out of the basket. Here’s a photo of the play I took:

By Owen Main

OK, so the ball was completely through the hoop part of the hoop. You can see the Fullerton player’s arm about to hit the ball back out.

After conferring, the officials decided that nobody saw the ball go through the hoop, nobody saw the ball punched out of the hoop, and to top it off, basket interference isn’t reviewable. That’s right, officials cannot apparently even look to see whether the ball went through the hoop, or at least that’s what Joe Callero said he was told.

It brings up a few questions. One is whether there is a need for a specific rule change/modification to allow officials to look explicitly at whether a hand has come up through the cylinder or check to see if the ball went all the way through the hoop, interference or not. I’m not sure how else to think about this one, except a savvy play by Tre Coggins — an all-conference type player — who pulled one over on all three officials. I used to hate when guys like Kevin Garnett would goal tend on shots well after a foul was called. Maybe that type of play is actually a savvy thing to do. At what point is the ball technically through the hoop?

Taking a potential three-point play off the board in favor of two free throws was obviously a big deal in a game that turned out to have a one-point margin.

Close game struggles

Cal Poly has struggled in close games this year. They’ve had eight conference games that have finished with a margin of four points or less. In those games they are 1-7.

Titans get HOT

Cal State Fullerton sported two really tough big men and three guys who can flat-out shoot. Tre Coggins, Malcom Brooks, and Khalil Ahmad combined to go 8-14 from behind the arc and score 49 points. In the second half, the Titans shot 6-7 from three point range. The Titans also became another team to shoot at least 50 percent from the field against Cal Poly (54.7%).

Senior night notes

For Joel Awich, Reese Morgan, Brian Bennett, and David Nwaba, Thursday was their last game at Mott Athletics Center. Nearly 2,500 fans showed up, despite Cal Poly’s record and place in the standings.

All four of this year’s seniors played significant roles on Cal Poly’s first-ever NCAA Tournament team. Awich and Morgan — both of whom have been in the program for five years, have been around for most of Joe Callero’s 100-plus wins at Cal Poly and will be missed.

Morgan led the quartet with 22 points, including 6-12 from three-point range, and all of the seniors scored at least nine points.

Big West Tournament looms

Cal Poly’s record fell to (10-17, 4-10) with the loss. It also clinched Cal Poly’s first losing record at home (5-7) under Joe Callero.

Cal Poly and Cal State Fullerton are the two bottom teams in the Big West Conference and Cal Poly would only be a 7-seed as things stand because CSUN is ineligible for the conference tournament. That would, if standings don’t change, match Cal Poly up with UC Irvine in the first round. The Mustangs still have to face the Anteaters in Irvine next week before finishing their road schedule at UCSB.

Two years ago, Cal Poly won the Big West from the seven seed, but it’s definitely something they would have liked to avoid, especially with the relative success they’ve had against Long Beach State, a possible third-seed this season.

To move up to the six seed, the Mustangs would need to win their remaining games and have Davis to lose all three games or get into some sort of tiebreaker with UC Riverside. Both UC Davis an UC Riverside are a game and a half ahead of the Mustangs in the standings.

In the end, it means that UC Irvine is the likely first-round matchup. Cal Poly goes to the Bren Events Center in Irvine to play an 8:30 game on Thursday night on ESPN3. The final regular season game in the Big West will be Saturday afternoon at the Thunderdome at UCSB.

Photos by Owen Main

On Friday night, Mission Prep football completed an undefeated Northern League season, beating Morro Bay 54-19. The game was close in the first quarter until Morro Bay lost starting quarterback Isaac Manuputy. Mission dominated the second quarter en route to the big win, including consecutive interception returns for touchdowns by the defense.

The Royals finished the regular season 8-2 and will host a CIF playoff game Friday against Aquinas (San Bernardino).

Saturday night is Senior Night at Mott Athletics Center, so I thought it was probably a good time to take a look back at the past five seasons and the contribution the three Cal Poly seniors have made to the program.

This season has been disappointing so far, but over the past five seasons, the Mustang men’s basketball program has clearly made strides under head coach Joe Callero. Kyle Odister is the only player on this year’s roster who was on the team during Callero’s first season, when the Mustangs improved from seven wins the previous year to 12 during Callero’s inaugural campaign.

This year’s senior class is really a study in changing expectations for the program at-large. Looking at just this year might be disappointing for fans who had big expectations, but a look back at the Cal Poly careers of Jamal Johnson, Chris Eversley, and Kyle Odister reveal a program that went from also-ran to contender.

Here’s a quick break-down of this year’s seniors and their careers.

CE usually prefers to throw down with his left hand. By Owen Main

Chris Eversley

After a season at Rice University, Eversley transferred to Cal Poly. The 6’7″ transfer had to sit-out a season before seeing time off the bench backing up David Hanson and Will Taylor. At the end of his sophomore campaign, Eversley saw some bigger minutes and was one of the team’s top scorers late in the season — sparking the team off the bench.

In his junior season, Eversley had what was possibly his finest year, averaging 15.4 points and 7 rebounds per game en route to first-team All-Big West Conference honors. With a sick Eversley, the team was thwarted in the conference semi-finals by a last second tip-in by eventual conference champion, Pacific.

At the beginning of this year, Eversley showed he could score from the outside as well. Against teams from the nation’s top conferences, CE poured in long-range jumper after long-range jumper. Open shots have been more difficult to come by in conference play, but the senior still leads the team in scoring and rebounding.

For me, the lasting image of Eversley will be his smile, exuberance and positivity both on and off the floor. His love of everything Cal Poly including Mott Athletics Center, the band, and his fellow students has ingratiated him to anyone watching throughout his career. He is a guy who is really easy to root for.

Recently, despite Cal Poly’s rough stretch in conference, Eversley has kept his bright-side attitude. His mantra of believing in his teammates until he’s played his last game in the green and gold is a testament to the kind of leader he seems to be. He is also one of the most eloquent college athletes I’ve ever heard with the media, coming off as more mature than players ten years his senior. His shoes will be hard to fill.

I told you you cannot leave him open. By Owen Main

Kyle Odister

When Kyle Odister entered the Cal Poly lineup in 2009-10, the freshman dazzled, playing point guard and making what seemed like clutch shot after clutch shot. It was Joe Callero’s first year as head coach, the Odister was named to the Big West All-Freshman team, averaging almost eight points per game.

Things looked promising for Odister until he suffered an injury that put him out of basketball for almost a year and a half. Once he returned, injuries seemed to always follow. For a player who always seemed to be playing hurt, Odister’s best game so far has probably been this season’s opener at Arizona. In his first game as a senior, Odister knocked down seven three-pointers en route to 21 points against a team that has been ranked first in the country for most of this season. At his best, Kyle Odister could shoot the ball with anyone.

Cal Poly was off to a great conference start this season until Odister went down with a foot injury in the fourth game of the conference season. While he’s dealt with his stress fracture, the team has gone 3-8 with one conference game left this season.

KO Buckets, as he is affectionately known, has never been afraid to shoot the ball and seems like he’s always most-clutch with the game on the line. Like a few others on this Cal Poly roster, Odister fans examining his career in San Luis Obispo will probably have some “what could have been” sentiment. I have it, too. Rarely does one see such a fearless, deadly shooter who also has enough athleticism and strength to play point guard effectively as a freshman.

Odister had all that and more. Unfortunately, he never really seemed to have a fully healthy season after his freshman year. On one foot or two, teams better know not to leave him open in the conference tournament next week.

In fact, in 35 years, when Odister is in his late 50’s, I’ll still advise that opponents don’t leave him open. He has a shooting stroke that is that smooth and a shooting mentality that is that vicious.

Jamal Johnson has run Cal Poly’s offense as the starting point guard the past two seasons. By Owen Main

Jamal Johnson

Jamal Johnson was thrown into the fire as one of two freshman point guards in 2010-11 when Amaurys Fermin went down with an injury. Over the past two seasons, Johnson has grown more solidly into his role as one of Cal Poly’s more vocal floor leaders.

Callero, a former point guard himself, is notoriously tough on point guards. He is also trusting of point guards he starts, and Johnson has been that since his junior year. Point guards in Callero’s offense aren’t usually big scorers, but Cal Poly has been at its best this year when Johnson has scored more. In fact, if I were going to predict how Cal Poly would do in the upcoming Big West Tournament, I might say that Johnson must have one or two double-digit scoring outbursts, which would be unusual for the lefty from San Antonio.

Johnson’s legacy at Cal Poly will be efficiently running the offense during his junior and senior seasons. Last year, his assist/turnover ratio was almost 3/1, something Callero usually points to as an indicator of success. Johnson’s passage to Cal Poly also perhaps helped pave the way for fellow Texans Ridge Shipley and Taylor Sutlive to come play in SLO.

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Tomorrow night’s game against Santa Barbara has already sold-out the general admission seating, a somewhat surprising fact considering the team has lost 8 of its past 11 games and is battling for a seed somewhere between 5 and 7 in the conference tournament. Perhaps that’s the real legacy of these players, along with Callero, over the past five seasons. When the program won seven games in 2008-09, Division I attendance hit rock bottom. This group’s ability to slowly and methodically bring fans back to Mott Athletics Center and re-establish a loyal fan-base for the program over the course of five seasons is notable.

At the end of the game Saturday night, the seniors will lead a team around the gym to high-five and shake hands with a group of adoring San Luis Obispo fans. Then they’ll salute the band. Just don’t expect it to be quick nor, for either side, easy.