Gaels back up ranking with blowout win
St. Mary’s on Thursday night played its first game as a ranked team since the first week of the season. The 18th-ranked Gaels took control of their matchup with Pepperdine late in the first half and cruised from there.
Guard Augustas Marciulionis scored a career-high 28 points and swingman Alex Ducas had 18 — including a halfcourt shot to beat the halftime buzzer — as St. Mary’s extended its winning streak to 13 games with a 103-59 romp in Moraga.
“It’s easy to get sidetracked when you start talking about this, that, conference championship, what you’re ranked, all that,” St. Mary’s head coach Randy Bennett said. “Keep the main thing the main thing. The main thing is to improve.
“As a coach, it’s hard to keep your guys there, but we have to. We have done that. These guys have done a terrific job of doing that.”
The Gaels (21-6, 12-0 WCC) have won 18 of 19 since they were 3-5 in early December.
St. Mary’s was without forward Joshua Jefferson. The sophomore, who’s averaging 10.2 points and 6.5 rebounds per game, is dealing with a left leg injury. Bennett said Jefferson and the Gaels were waiting on results of an MRI exam.
“There’s not one guy that can carry the water that he carried,” Ducas said of Jefferson, who’s one of the most improved players in the conference. “So it’s a collective within our group to kind of carry a little bit more water and share the load a little bit.
“For me, it was being a bit more aggressive on offense.”
Ducas, who’s in his fifth season with the Gaels, came into Thursday averaging 8.8 points per game. He went 7-for-9 from the floor.
Marciulionis went 11-for-16 from the field, including 6-for-6 in the second half, as he bested the career high of 25 he set in a 70-65 win over Loyola Marymount on Jan. 27. He also contributed six assists and five rebounds.
Other double-figure scorers for the Gaels were guard Aidan Mahaney (13), center Mitchell Saxen (12) and reserve forward Mason Forbes (11). A grad transfer from Harvard, Forbes hit all five of his field-goal tries, including a crowd-pleasing baseline dunk with just more than four minutes remaining. That was part of a 21-0 blitz.
The Gaels were 25-for-33 (75.8%) from the floor in the second half.
St. Mary’s did not trail, but the Waves (10-17, 3-9) hung close for most of the first half. The Gaels led 27-24 with just over four minutes remaining before the intermission. They then went on an 11-0 run.
The Gaels were up 40-27 with 4.2 seconds left. Houston Mallette missed a foul shot and Ducas grabbed the rebound. He dribbled to about midcourt and let fly — and it was on the mark.
Ducas and teammates Kevin Gad and Cade Bennett (Randy’s son) have a game-day ritual in which they take halfcourt shots at their shoot-around.
With less than five seconds on the clock, “there’s no real exact play you should run,” Ducas said. “It’s kind of look around and see if anyone’s ahead of you. I didn’t see anyone for a certain pass, so I thought, ‘I’m feeling pretty good right now. Let’s hoist it up.’
“I practiced one probably six hours before in the day. I was feeling good, and lucky enough, it went in.”
That made Ducas 4-for-4 from beyond the arc in the half and gave St. Mary’s a 16-point lead at the break.
Landale honored: Before the game, St. Mary’s retired Jock Landale’s jersey No. 34. The center, who’s now with the Houston Rockets, joined fellow Australians Matthew Dellavedova (4) and Patty Mills (13) and Lowell High alum Tom Meschery (31) as men’s basketball players whose numbers are displayed in the rafters.
Landale spent four seasons (2014-18) with the Gaels. He was the WCC Player of the Year in 2017-18 when he set school records for points (761) and field goals (301) in a season. He ranks first in program history in career field-goal percentage (62.5), seventh in career points (1,658) and fifth in career rebounds (843).
Briefly: St. Mary’s is off until Tuesday when it hosts USF. The Dons and Gonzaga are tied for second in the WCC, 21⁄2 games back of the Gaels. … Pepperdine swingman Michael Ajayi came into Thursday leading the WCC in scoring at 17.2 points per game and was second in rebounding at 9.5 per. The Gaels, mainly Ducas and Forbes, held Ajayi to 11 points on 2-for-10 shooting and four boards. … The Waves and Gaels meet again in Malibu on Feb. 29.