2022 Big West Men's Basketball Schedule | Standings | Stats | Week 2 Notes (.pdf)
What 2 Watch 4
CSU Bakersfield plays at Idaho in the lone contest featuring a Big West team on Wednesday.
UC Riverside takes a road trip to Omaha to face No. 10 Creighton on Thursday.
Friday will feature four road games for The Big West in UC San Diego at Navy, UC Santa Barbara at Arizona, Cal State Fullerton at Pacific and Cal Poly at Stanford. UC Davis hosts Arkansas State in the only home contest for the league on that day.
UC San Diego plays a neutral-site game against Youngstown State in Annapolis, Md. on Saturday. Also on that day, UC Irvine will travel to Pepperdine. Cal Poly hosts Mount St. Mary’s in the lone contest featuring a Big West team on Sunday.
A pair of MTE’s kick off Thanksgiving week. CSUN plays Tennessee State in the SoCal Challenge at JSerra HS. UC Riverside takes on Weber State in the Vegas 4 Tournament at Dollar Loan Center, site of The Big West Men's and Women's Basketball Championships. Also on Monday, UC Santa Barbara hosts Hampton.
Opening Week Highlights
The Big West went 17-12 overall in the opening week of the men’s basketball season. The league went 7-3 on Nov. 7, the first day of countable competition set by the NCAA. UC Davis traveled to the Bay Area and got a 75-65 win at Cal, led by Christian Anigwe’s 21 points. Long Beach State also got a road win, 79-64, at California Baptist with 13 points each from Jadon Jones and Lassina Traore. Cal Poly, CSU Bakersfield, CSUN, UC Davis, UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara defeated non-Division I opponents on Opening Night.
The Big West is 3-3 against the Pac-12, including 2-0 against Cal, to start the season. UC Davis took down the Golden Bears on opening day 75-65 and UC San Diego defeated them most recently on Tuesday, 64-62. In perhaps the biggest surprise of the week, UC Irvine defeated then-No. 21 Oregon 69-56 in Eugene, backed by a 24-point, six 3-pointers made night from DJ Davis. The Anteaters were selected as Andy Katz's Team of the Week.
UC Santa Barbara defeated Fresno State 61-54 in a neutral site game at Kaiser Premanente Arena in Santa Cruz, home of the Golden State Warriors’ G-League team, to move to 2-0. Andre Kelly recorded a double-double in the game with 16 points and 15 rebounds.
Hawai’i went 2-1 in their Rainbow Classic tournament, taking down Mississippi Valley State 72-54 and Eastern Washington 71-51, before falling to Yale 62-59 in overtime in the title match. Noel Coleman averaged 16.7 points in the three games.
Cal State Fullerton had a pair of close wins. Thanks a 27-point effort from Jalen Harris the Titans bested Pepperdine 74-71 Friday. Tory San Antonio poured in 21 points and four others scored in double figures in a 94-85 double overtime win against Vermont.
Poll Position
Highlighted by the win over Oregon, UC Irvine is now receiving votes in the latest edition of the AP Top 25 College Basketball Poll. For full poll, click here.
Preseason Prognostications
UC Santa Barbara topped The Big West men’s basketball preseason poll for the second year in succession, having garnered nine of the 11 first-place votes by league head coaches. The Gauchos accumulated 99 points, and sit ahead of Hawai’i (86 points) and 2021-22 regular-season champion and tournament runner-up Long Beach State (84), which split the remaining two first-place nods. UC Irvine (73) was slotted into the fourth position.
UC Santa Barbara is expected to be led by preseason All-Big West selections Ajay Mitchell and Andre Kelly. A sophomore guard from Ans, Belgium, Mitchell was the 2021-22 Big West Freshman of the Year after providing 11.6 points and a team-leading 3.7 assists per contest. Kelly is a 6-foot-9 forward out of Stockton who arrived in the off-season as a graduate transfer from Cal and averaged career bests of 13.4 points and a team-high 8.4 rebounds en route to an All-Pac 12 Honorable Mention selection for the Golden Bears last season.
Hawai’i will look to junior guard Noel Coleman, a native of Leopoldsburg, Belgium, who topped his team scoring chart a year ago at 14.8 points per game. Long Beach State’s Dan Monson, the Big West Coach of the Year for the fourth time in 2021-22 and the dean of Big West men’s basketball coaches heading into his 16th campaign, returns Joel Murray (Rowlett, Texas). The senior guard led The Big West in scoring as a first-year standout for the Beach at 16.7 points per game following three stellar seasons at Division II powerhouse West Texas A&M. He also paced LBSU with 94 assists (2.8 per game).
The Anteaters and head coach Russell Turner bring back Dawson Baker into the fold. The junior guard put in 11.2 points per game and was an all-conference honorable mention selection last year.
UC Riverside (56 points), UC Davis (54) and reigning Big West Championship victor Cal State Fullerton (51) are all bunched together in fifth through seventh, ahead of CSU Bakersfield (32) and Cal Poly (29). UC San Diego makes its first appearance in the poll, in 10th with 23 points. The Tritons, like the Roadrunners, are third-year members of The Big West, but as they are still in the four-year reclassification period from Division II to Division I, had been omitted from the past two installments. They will be included in this year’s conference standings, but remain ineligible for the Hercules Tires Big West Championship. CSUN rounds things out in 11th with 18 points.
UC Riverside’s Zyon Pullin was the lone repeat member of the coaches’ preseason team, joining Coleman, Kelly, Mitchell, Murray and Elijah Pepper of UC Davis.
A senior guard out of Pleasant Hill, Pullin scored a team-best 14.3 points per outing and dished out a league-leading 117 assists (4.3 per game) in 2021-22. Pepper (Selah, Wash.) was on the media’s preseason squad a year ago and went on to average a career-best 15.1 points per game, good enough for first on the Aggies and fifth in the league. Murray was one of six members of the 2021-22 All-Big West First Team, while Coleman, Mitchell, Pepper and Pullin all made it onto the second team. It was a second straight second-team selection for Pepper, while Pullin picked up honorable mention for the 2020-21 campaign.
2021-22 Postseason Rewind
Second-seeded Cal State Fullerton swept through the 2022 Hercules Tires Big West Men’s Basketball Championship, presented by the Hawaiian Islands, to claim the conference’s automatic qualifier into the 68-team field of the 2022 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship. The men’s & women’s championships marked the historic first events inside the brand-new Dollar Loan Center in Henderson, Nev.
The Titans’ E.J. Anosike provided a team-high 22 points on just six attempts from the field while making all six, as he shot 10-of-14 from the free throw line, and grabbed a game-best eight rebounds in Saturday’s title-tilt thriller against top-seeded regular-season champion Long Beach State, who got 24 points from Joel Murray and 23 from Big West Player of the Year Colin Slater. Freshman Jadon Jones connected on a huge late triple for the second straight night to make it a one-point game at 72-71, and the Beach procured one last possession, but could not get a potential game-winning shot off before the final buzzer.
Slater poured in a career-high 30 points in Long Beach State’s semifinal victory over 2021 tourney champion UC Santa Barbara. Jones’ deep three-pointer with 1.3 seconds left was the difference in the 67-64 win. Cal State Fullerton got past third-seeded Hawai’i, 58-46.
Winners during the first round were ninth-seeded CSU Bakersfield and No. 7 seed UC Davis, both by double digits. The Beach knocked off the Roadrunners to begin quarterfinal action on Thursday afternoon. The fifth-seeded Gauchos followed by taking out the No. 4 seed, UC Irvine, and the Titans rolled over the Aggies. In the nightcap, UH narrowly held off sixth-seeded UC Riverside by a single point.
Anosike was named the Most Valuable Player, with teammate Damari Milstead, Murray, Slater, Ajare Sanni of UC Santa Barbara and Junior Madut of Hawai’i joining him on the All-Tournament Team.
Cal State Fullerton was placed as a No. 15 seed and drew No. 2 Duke in the first round of the NCAA Championship. The Titans fell to the Blue Devils 78-61.
Long Beach State earned a trip to the NIT and fell in the first round to BYU 93-72. |
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