March madness
The Big West Conference men’s and women’s basketball tournaments get underway today.
The UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara men’s basketball teams have been on a collision course since the teams first met in late December. Many expect they will meet again in the Big West Tournament title game Saturday night in Las Vegas with the winner getting the conference’s lone berth in the 68-team NCAA Tournament.
In December, UC Irvine (16-8 overall, 10-4 Big West) hosted the Gauchos and won 75-56 and 73-69. The sweep sparked the Anteaters to a quick 5-0 start in league play. UCSB, meanwhile, ran off a programrecord 13 consecutive wins after meeting the Anteaters and finished the season 19-4 overall, the best winning percentage in school history, and a program-record 13-3 in league play.
The 10-team, five-day Big West tourney starts with a pair of first-round games today.
Top-seeded UCSB’s regular-season title is its first outright crown since 2003 and its first since sharing the 2010 title. For years a perennial force in the conference, that role was conceded to UCI over the past decade.
The second-seeded Anteaters finished 10-4 in league play, a good record but not as good as recent seasons. Coach Russ Turner’s team had won five of the last seven regular-season titles and has played for the postseason title five times in eight years, with last season’s tourney canceled because of the pandemic.
“I like where we are,” Turner said. “The performance this season hasn’t been as consistent as I like, but that’s understandable with such a young team. We’ve beaten every team in the conference we’ve played, so we’re pretty confident.”
UCI has just two upperclassmen in senior center Brad Greene (9.6 points, 7.7 rebounds per game, 44 blocked shots), who was named the Big West Defensive Player of the Year on Monday, and junior forward Collin Welp (14.8, 7.7), who was a first-team all-conference selection.
The rest of the roster is made up of freshmen and sophomores. The entire backcourt rotation has been manned mostly by players in their first season of college basketball. Dawson Baker, a former standout at Capistrano Valley High, was named Big West Freshman of the Year (10.6 points) and DJ Davis (Riverside Poly) has improved as the season progressed, scoring nine points or more in five of his last eight games.
“There’s nothing about back-to-back games that helps a young team,” Turner said of the schedule change of playing Friday-Saturday two-game series in light of pandemic protocols. “We have a bunch of guys who are first-year players. It eliminates time to practice and learn between games.”
The upside is that Greene and Welp are veteran players who have had success in the conference’s three games/three days tourney format. The 2019 team won the title and then advanced to the NCAAs, where they upset Kansas State to win the school’s first-ever tourney game.
UCSB started preparing for this moment four seasons ago. After a 6-22 record in Bob Williams’ last season, coach Joe Pasternack arrived and put the program’s focus on building via transfers.
Five of their six standouts came from other schools, including Big West Player of the Year JaQuori McLaughlin (15.6 ppg, 5.4 assists per game). He came via Oregon State. Others include graduate transfer senior Brandon Cyrus (DePaul), junior Miles Norris (Oregon), Sixth Man of the Year Ajare Sanni (Pacific) and senior Devearl Ramsey (Nevada).
Junior forward Amadou Sow (13 ppg, 7.5 rpg), a firstteam honoree, came straight from high school.
SCHEDULE At Michelob ULTRA Arena, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas Today
No. 8CS Northridge vs. No. 9 Long Beach St., 3 p.m. (ESPN3) No. 7 CS Fullerton vs. No. 10 Cal Poly, 6 p.m. (ESPN3)
Thursday
No. 1 UC Santa Barbara vs. No. 8-9 winner, 11 a.m. (ESPN3) No. 4 UC Davis vs. No. 5 CS Bakersfield, 2 p.m. (ESPN3) No. 2 UC Irvine vs. No. 7-10 winner, 5 p.m. (ESPN3)
No. 3 UC Riverside vs. No. 6 Hawaii, 8 p.m. (ESPN3)
Friday
Semifinal No. 1, 6 p.m. (ESPN3) Semifinal No. 2, 9 p.m. (ESPNU)
Saturday
Championship game, 8:30 p.m. (ESPN2)
“It doesn’t work to get any transfer, it has to be the right transfer with the right character,” Pasternack said. “We were fortunate to get guys who wanted a second chance in a good program.”
Pasternack said the team wasn’t ready for a team like UCI that early in the season, particularly on the road.
“I think UC Irvine had more prep time and had played a better schedule,” he said. “But from then on, we improved to where we’re the No. 2 team in defense and rebounding.”
UC Riverside enters the tourney as a serious contender, with wins this season against each of the two top seeds and a number of program milestones — the third winning season since the Highlanders joined the Big West and Division I; the 8-4 record the first winning conference season; and the No. 3 seed the school’s highest. The Highlanders are 2-11 all time in Big West tourney play, both wins against Cal Poly.