The final edition of BracketBusters proved to be an exciting one in the Big West, with several teams just barely escaping with dramatic wins. In conference play, Pacific and Cal Poly were both dealt losses by teams trying to make a run down the stretch.
Anteater Aggression
With just under 12 minutes left in last week’s conference game between UC Irvine and Pacific at the Bren Center, UC Irvine (16-13, 9-6) head coach Russell Turner was approached by one of his assistant coaches during a media timeout.
Tied at 38-38 coming out of the timeout, the Anteaters proceeded to hit four threes in row for a 12-4 run that put UCI up 50-42 over the Big West’s second-place team. The Anteaters would never look back, going on to upset the Tigers, 68-59.
“I told them halfway through the second half to start making some threes,” Turner said.
While turner jokingly took all of the glory, he was quick to admit that the words of the assistant who shall remain nameless were instrumental.
“I know exactly what I said to them, but I don’t think what I said had anything to do with it,” Turner said. “I said, ‘I’m going to settle down,’ because I was crazed. I just thought we looked un-aggressive. One of my assistant coaches said to me, ‘They’re feeling tension because of you,’ I said, ‘Alright, I’ll settle down.’”
Those threes were the start of a 15-9 run and a run in which the Anteaters also kept up the energy defensively.
“That was the best stretch we’ve had of making shots all season,” Turner said. “You have to be able to reach a high emotional level to play great defense and you’ve got to convert that to execution on the other end.”
Two nights later in Arlington, Texas, the Anteaters used a similar formula to take down UT-Arlington, 77-70, in a BracketBuster game.
Five Anteaters scored in double figures, with the play of the big men leading the way. Adam Folker scored 16 with seven rebounds and five assists while Will Davis II also had 16 with six boards and five blocked shots.
Folker’s double-double against Pacific helped earn him a Big West Player of the Week award.
The Anteaters have effectively “Defended the Bren” all season and are 11-1 at home with a perfect 8-0 mark in the Big West. Despite being in fourth place behind Hawaii in the Big West Standings, the ‘Eaters currently boast the conference’s third-best RPI of 174.
Selfless Seeley
Cal State Fullerton guard D.J. Seeley hit a major career milestone last week when he scored his 1,000th career point. The senior was just the 21st player in Titan history to do so, reaching the feat with 21 points in a 77-60 win over Cal Poly.
It was an important win for the Titans (14-13, 6-8), who had been skidding as of late with two losses going into last week. Seeley, a senior captain, was more concerned with his team’s standing in the Big West than his own achievement.
"It feels good, but it feels better that we got the win," Seeley said. “This game was huge for us tonight. Our momentum was going down and tonight we came out and laid everything out on the court.
“I liked the way we were playing together, playing defense, rebounding. We're not going to do everything perfect every play, but I thought, when we started to go down a little bit in the second half, I liked the way we picked ourselves back up."
Seeley, currently the second-leading scorer in the Big West with 18.3 points per game, helped the Titans to a 2-0 week with 16 points in Fullerton’s 63-57 BracketBuster win over Texas A&M Corpus Christi.
Great escapes
For the most part, the Big West BracketBuster games were close. With the exception of Hawaii, who recorded a lopsided 84-50 win over Northern Arizona. UC Davis, Cal Poly, UC Santa Barbara and Cal State Northridge all played games that were decided by three or less points.
The two top contenders out of the Big West, Long Beach State and Pacific, both dropped their nationally-televised contests.
The Beach (17-10, 13-2) was frustrated by Stephen F. Austin’s staunch, polished defense, which is currently ranked No. 1 in the nation, in a 68-60 loss on their home court of the Pyramid.
“They reminded me a lot of Wisconsin the way they play,” said Long Beach head coach Dan Monson. “I told (head coach Danny Kaspar) that when I shook his hand, I said ‘You guys are just way too disciplined for us.”
Pacific (15-12, 9-5) also kept it close in a 67-62 loss on the road in Kalamazoo, Mich., but Western Michigan took advantage of cold 3-point shooting by the Tigers for a win.
End of an era
For the past 11 seasons, some of the top mid-major teams have taken a break from conference play in late February to face a team of similar caliber in the ESPN BracketBuster series. But it was announced that this season would be the last.
Conference realignment and the TV contracts that come with have made it difficult to schedule some of the higher-profile mid-major teams. On the other end, the teams with RPIs in the high 200-300s may not always benefit the way the Ionas and George Masons of the college basketball world have.
A total of 122 teams across 13 conferences participated in the event this season, with each Big West team earning a spot in a BracketBuster game. Long Beach State has now been awarded three televised BracketBuster games in a row with Pacific the only other team to earn a televised game in recent seasons.
Monson said that BracketBusters have helped gain exposure for teams at that level.
“Nobody else has gotten a TV game but us for like 5 years, that’s hard,” Monson said. “For us. It’s been great. Times have changed. When BracketBusters started, teams like us weren’t on TV that much, I think we had 17 TV games this year.”
But Monson also sees the other side of it.
In his first season at the helm, The Beach went just 6-25 and one of those losses was a memorable BracketBuster loss.
The 49ers traveled to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to take on New Mexico State in a non-televised BracketBuster game. The Aggies’ RPI was up in the 100s while the 49ers, in the midst of a dismal rebuilding season, was in the 300s.
“The BracketBuster has a lot of negatives to it and a lot of positives,” Monson said. “That’s hard, interrupting your league when teams are struggling right now. Are they going to get better after getting beat again? The teams that in the bottom of our league, I don’t think so.”
While the number of BracketBuster games with wide RPI differentials have decreased, there were still a few this season, as holes on schedules need to be filled.
Cal State Fullerton’s RPI was almost 100 above Texas A&M Corpus Christi’s and UC Davis’ 228 was far better than Northern Colorado’s 300.
Quick Hitters
Long Beach State forward James Ennis was named a finalist for the Lew Henson Award, given annually to the top mid-major player of the year. Ennis is averaging 17.5 points per game and 6.7 rebounds and has scored in double-digits in his last 32-straight games ... Dylan Royer, a former Cal Poly (13-12, 8-6) walk-on and local product out of Los Osos, provided the heroics for Cal Poly against visiting Loyola Marymount last weekend, hitting a last-second three to lift the Mustangs over the Lions, 63-60 ... The Aggies (12-14, 7-7) got in on the buzzer-beating ways when Paolo Mancasola launched a game-winner for a 79-78 win over Northern Colorado.
