The Riverside Press-Enterprise
California Baptist coach Olson still basking in glow of postseason run
California Baptist University women’s basketball coach Jarrod Olson fills out a tournament bracket every year — just for fun — and this year he got to do something he has never done before.
“We’re filling out the brackets at the house with my kids and my wife and I got to pick CBU to win the whole thing,” Olson said. “I’m taking a big ‘L’ on the bracket this year but I’m feeling really good about it.”
CBU (28-4 overall) advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in its Division I era after capturing the program’s first WAC Tournament title in Las Vegas.
“I grew up with the NCAA Tournament and I fill out my bracket out every year to this day, and having a team on one of the lines of the bracket was really cool,” Olson said.
The Lancers’ thrilling 75-74 victory over Stephen F. Austin in the conference championship game capped a nearly untouchable 18-2 league season.
“I thought that was pretty cool to be able to win it and it was satisfying because I knew we had the best team but the best team doesn’t always win and you get into the one-offs and things can happen,” Olson said. “I think that the championship game was about as exciting a finish as we’ve had since I’ve been at CBU. It looked like it wasn’t going to happen and then all of a sudden things flipped quickly, and the game was over before you knew it.
“It’s one of those things where it happened so fast that it was hard to process what happened, but I do remember Nae Calhoun making two huge plays and making a 3 in the corner and it was like, ‘Here we go.’ It was pretty fun,” Olson said.
A matchup against UCLA in the Round of 64 proved to be the perfect setting for a moment of a lifetime.
“There’s been some moments when I’ve tried to step back and get a different perspective on how things went because, obviously, they went very well, but I’m sure there’ll be some things that’ll come to light in the next month or two where it’ll be like, ‘Wow, I didn’t really think about it at the time but that’s really cool,’” Olson said.
“In terms of having the whole school with us to the NCAA Tournament, we had people come to the game, and just the amount of people supporting us, friends, family, fans, students. It just kind of made the experience better because in most cases you’re going off somewhere by yourself and you don’t get that community feel at an event like that,” he said.
CBU supporters arrived en masse to Pauley Pavilion in Westwood, and were the most vocal despite the Lancers’ 84-55 loss to the Bruins.
“I just felt really proud to be part of being able to bring CBU to that moment,” Olson said. “It’s something we’ve been building toward for a long time and to have it happen in that way, at probably the most iconic basketball venue on the West Coast and against a premier team like UCLA, kind of validates a lot of what CBU has been working towards athletically over the last 10 years or so.
“I just thought that was pretty awesome and I’m really proud to be a small part of that, and at the same time trying to balance being happy for the girls on the team because it was a pretty awesome thing for them, too,” he said.
BRONCOS’ GIBBONS HEATS UP >> Cal Poly Pomona junior infielder Anthony Gibbons went a combined 11 for 16 with three home runs, nine RBIS and nine runs scored as the Broncos baseball team won 3 of 4 games at Sonoma State before spring break.
The Yucaipa High alum and Riverside City College grad went 3 for 4 in each of the first three games of the series — all wins — and drove in five runs in the second game of a doubleheader on March 16.
Gibbons is one of three players to start all 24 games so far this season for Cal Poly Pomona (12-12 overall, 8-8 CCAA), which hosts San Francisco State for a fourgame series starting Thursday.
LANG CLAIMS D3 TITLE >> Claremontmudd-scripps junior Lucas Lang won the national championship in the 1,650-yard freestyle by a margin of seven-hundredths of a second at the NCAA Division III swimming championships Saturday at the Greensboro Aquatics Center in North Carolina.
Lang, who was the runner-up in the 1,650 as a freshman and finished fifth a year ago, earned the title this year by taking 9.33 seconds off his time and finishing in 15:17.48 to beat NYU’S Connor Vincent (15:17.55).
Lang’s title makes it three consecutive years that CMS swimming has won a national championship, with Frank Applebaum winning the 200 fly in both 2022 and 2023.
SBVC’S SOFTBALL SETS DATE >> San Bernardino Valley College will open its long-awaited softball facility on Saturday, April 19.
It will be exactly 11 years to the day since the last home softball game for SBVC (5-14 overall, 1-3 Inland Empire Athletic Conference), which will host Victor Valley in a doubleheader beginning at 11 a.m.
The Wolverines finish the regular season with three consecutive games at their new home facility, including the season finale against Desert on April 24 at 2 p.m.