Toro Cagers Finally Show Life and Wallop Indiana Team, 80-62

The team that Coach Dave Yanai figured he’d have this season finally showed up to play serious basketball for Cal State Dominguez Hills on Wednesday night.

Touted in the preseason as one of the best Toro teams in recent memory, Dominguez Hills has, for the most part, gone about basketball in the last month as if it was a secondary concern.

But Wednesday night in an 80-62 thrashing of visiting Taylor University of Indiana, the Toros (5-4) put together their finest performance of the year before a crowd of only 187.

Dominguez Hills shot 54.3% from the field, made 25 of 34 free throws and in the first half forced eight Taylor turnovers. All this without starter Kenyatta Kalisana, who sat out the game because he missed the afternoon shoot-around.

Maybe Taylor should have tried an afternoon shoot-around. The Trojans were content to take theirs in jeans during halftime of the women’s basketball game and their unfamiliarity with the floor showed throughout. Taylor shot 48.8% for the game but attempted just 41 shots. Yanai cited consistency as a goal for this game and pointed that out to his team many times before Wednesday night’s contest.

“Our problem has been that in stretches our offense has not been able to sustain itself. I think our defense has been pretty good throughout,” he said.

Indeed, Dominguez Hills has allowed an average of 63.1 points a game while scoring just 67.4. Toro opponents have shot just 43.8 % from the field, yet Dominguez Hills has shot only four points better.

Wednesday’s game was the first of three straight for the team, which opens tonight in Tacoma, Wash., in the first round of the Puget Sound Tournament against Central Washington.

A loss Wednesday would have made it virtually impossible for Dominguez Hills to finish 1988 above the .500 mark. Yanai said earlier in the year he would consider it a moral victory to come out of the Washington trip with a 1-1 mark.

“It’s a realistic goal,” he reasserted Wednesday night before adding: “Naturally, if we develop consistency in our offense, I think we have a great opportunity to take two games up there.”

Off to an 11-1 start, Taylor, an NAIA school, figured to give the Toros a stiff test, especially since Dominguez Hills was coming off its worst game of the year, a 74-60 defeat to Cal State Hayward.

But the Trojans never could get untracked, falling behind by as many as 14 points in the first half. Taylor scored just one basket in the first seven minutes of the second half. By the time the Trojans scored their sixth point of the second half, Coach Paul Patterson was gone, the result of two technicals fouls whistled against the Trojan bench.

Whether Peterson hit the showers or not really didn’t matter. Dominguez Hills locked this game up early, thanks to the inside play of senior center Anthony Blackmon. At 6-foot, 7-inches tall, Blackmon has shown a propensity for scoring most of his 19.3 points a game from the 15-foot range. But Wednesday night he suddenly discovered the paint and drove against his 6-foot, 10-inch counterpart, Jay Teagle.

Teagle leaned on Blackmon a lot in the second half, which cut Blackmon’s ability to go to the basket. But it was clear in the first 20 minutes that Blackmon controlled the low post, something the Toros have desperately needed from him. When he wasn’t attempting to score, he was driving with the ball, then passing to open men on the perimeter. He scored nine points in the first 20 minutes and added seven rebounds as the Toros shot 57% from the field.