Fullerton’s Downhill Slide Continues

The stark reality that John Williams won’t be back this season has settled in on the Cal State Fullerton men’s basketball team.

Goodbye two-handed power dunks, above-the-rim rebounds and 17 points a game from inside.

“We haven’t been able to find any answer for his absence,” Titan Coach Bob Hawking said.

Fullerton didn’t come any closer Thursday night against Big West Conference Western Division leader Pacific. The Tigers scored the game’s final 18 points and won, 81-57, in front of 4,637 in Spanos Center.

It was the 16th consecutive victory at home for Pacific (19-4, 10-3 in the Big West), counting five in a row last season.

The Titans (11-12, 4-9) dropped below .500 for the first time this season, losing their sixth game in the last eight since Williams was sidelined with a broken wrist.

Without him, the Titans have been forced to rely on their outside shooting and scrappy defense, but even when that is going well, it stretches only so far.

Pacific had a 40-29 rebounding advantage and shot 53.6% from the field. A 21-point performance from guard Tim Bowman and 18 more from 6-foot-10 center Rayne Mahaffey led a balanced Pacific attack.

Guard Chris Dade led Fullerton with 18 points, and freshman reserve forward Josh Leighton scored a season-high 14, but the Titans didn’t get the consistent shooting they needed against one of the conference’s best defensive teams.

The Titans shot 35.4% for the game and only 28% in the first half. Fullerton fell behind early and didn’t reach double digits in scoring until 15 minutes into the game, but managed to hang in and trailed by only six points, 28-22, at halftime.

Leighton, Dade and guard Ali Nayab, who finished with 12 points, led a surge in the first 10 minutes of the second half that produced a brief Titan lead, 45-43, but Pacific worked the ball inside for two consecutive layups by Mahaffey and was rolling again.

“They were able to create some easy shots when they needed them, and they gained some momentum off that,” Hawking said. “It seemed like there was a lid on the basket for us in the last six or seven minutes.”

Fullerton’s last field goal was a three-pointer by Chris St. Clair with slightly more than three minutes left that cut Pacific’s lead to 63-57, but the Tigers shut the door after that.

“I’m just happy that our guys responded in the last 10 minutes of the game,” Pacific Coach Bob Thomason said. “This was an important game for us. It’s important to win when you’ve lost two in a row.”

Hawking didn’t think his team did anything differently in the final 10 minutes of the second half than it did in the first 10. “We weren’t getting many second efforts late in the game, but that was more related to having a small lineup on the court at the time,” he said.

Leighton made five of eight shots from the field in the second half. “I hit my first shot in the second half, so I kept on going,” Leighton said. “Maybe it was being close to home, but I felt comfortable shooting the ball all night.”

Leighton played high school basketball in Sacramento, which is 50 miles away.

Dade made seven of 12 shots from the field, and Nayab was five for 11, but Dane Plock missed his seven shots and St. Clair was only two for 10. And, of course, the Titans continued to struggle inside without Williams.

“The big problem is our inside game,” Dade said. “We need to find someone who can defend and score inside.”