Pacific Beats Cal State Fullerton, 50-46, in Sloppy Game for Both Sides
One coach said it was a game “nobody wanted to win.” The other said it was a game “we wanted to win so badly, we were a little tight.”
In any case, it was a game that won’t show up in anybody’s season highlight film. Somewhere Monday night, there was a recreation league game that featured better shooting, better ballhandling and certainly better execution.
In the end, University of the Pacific hung on for a 50-46 Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. victory over Cal State Fullerton in front of 2,800 at the Spanos Center who might have seen a better game outside on the campus asphalt courts . . . . if the fog wasn’t so thick.
The one inside was certainly good for a few laughs, though.
“It was a strange, strange, strange game,” said Titan Coach George McQuarn. “Neither team played well and neither team played like they wanted to win.”
That’s not exactly the way UOP Coach Tom O’Neill saw it, though.
“I thought we played very hard,” he said. “We had some very sloppy spurts and we were tight, but we wanted this game very badly.”
Fullerton (2-3 in PCAA play and 9-8 overall) at least had an excuse. The Titans’ top two scorers--Kevin Henderson and Richard Morton--are out with ankle injuries. And McQuarn was so unhappy with the play of No. 3 scorer, Kerry Boagni, he did not put him in the game in the second half, despite the fact that No. 4 scorer (Henry Turner) and No. 5 (Herman Webster) both were in foul trouble all night.
That meant freshman guard Chris Ceballos, who had played just 41 total minutes before Monday night, and third-string point guard Alexander Hamilton, who is averaging four points a game, were forced to carry the offense much of the evening. Both finished with nine points.
Webster, who had 12 points in 26 minutes of play, was the only Titan in double figures. Reserve Drew Rodgers was the only Tiger in double figures with 16.
The Tigers (2-3, 9-7) could have put the game away if they could have put the ball through the hoop from the free-throw line, but they missed six straight down the stretch until Chris Gray sank a pair with 13 seconds left to give UOP the four-point margin of victory. Pacific shot 52% from the line for the game.
Fullerton, which played its first three conference opponents dead even in regulation and beat the fourth (San Jose State) by one, had a chance to tie this one with 15 seconds remaining when Hamilton missed a twisting eight-foot bank attempt. Gray got the rebound, was fouled and that was it.
“I don’t want you guys thinking that Boagni not playing was the difference,” McQuarn told the media. “I didn’t think he wanted to play . . . to do the things he needed to do for us to win.”
When someone suggested that despite Boagni’s current slump (he has made just 30 of his last 97 field-goal attempts) he was liable to get hot and help the struggling Titan offense, McQuarn replied, “Yeah, ‘liable.’ And he’s just as liable to shoot you out of it.”
Boagni didn’t have any answers.
“I don’t know, man, I just don’t know,” said the senior who was Fullerton’s leading scorer in five of the first six games this season when he was averaging 19 points a game. “He (McQuarn) didn’t say anything to me. And I can’t predict what might have happened if I got to play.”
The only thing that seems to be predictable these days is that the Titans will stay close. . . . no matter who’s on the floor. They hung tough Monday night going through extended stretches with a lineup averaging a combined 15 points per game.
“They’ve got great athletes and they play good defense,” O’Neill said. “I think we had a big letdown against UC Irvine Saturday (after a five-point loss to 12th-ranked Nevada Las Vegas Thursday). But we were mentally into this game. We didn’t let our concentration slip.
“Fullerton is capable of playing with anyone.”
Maybe. But don’t expect it to be pretty.