Moose picks up slack

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By Joshua D. Scroggin

Mustafa Al-Sayyad is a good guy.

After all, the 6-foot, 9-inch junior center is still on the Fresno State basketball team.

He didn’t beat up his girlfriend’s car. His dad didn’t tell the Fresno Bee he’s a pot smoker. And just ask him to comment on his standout play in the past two games.

You’ll get a sheepish grin and an embarrassed, unrehearsed deflection of credit to his teammates.

Although Al-Sayaad has had his own rough stretch of unproductive games—culminated by a scoreless effort at Tulsa on Feb. 18—he’s come back to post back-to-back career scoring highs. Just in time for the Bulldogs’ first postseason tournament in two years.

Like Al-Sayyad, Fresno State coach Ray Lopes was not willing to give too much praise either—at least not any more than he was willing to give anyone else.

“ Moose is coming off a tremendous game where he scored his career high,” Lopes said, “but I think Francis Koffi is playing better offensively and Dreike [Bouldin] is playing better offensively with more confidence. All three of those guys are playing with more confidence.”

Maybe it’s because Lopes knows when the Bulldogs play Boise State in the first round of the Western Athletic Conference Tournament on Thursday in the Save Mart Center, Al-Sayyad’s hot streak is likely to end.

The Broncos will revert to the strategy they used to limit Al-Sayyad to just 2-of-6 shooting and five points when the teams last met Feb. 14. Boise State double-teamed Al-Sayyad each time he touched the ball that night. The frustration was visible in his demeanor and on the stat sheet.

“ When I get frustrated, you know,” Al-Sayyad said, “I just take myself out of the game.”

Nobody would be surprised if the Las Vegas odds-makers take Al-Sayyad out of their game plan. Nobody’s expecting another career-high performance.

But he deserves more respect—if only to compensate for the ironic truth that he is the one player on the team recruited by Jerry Tarkanian, and he’s not one of the team’s troublemakers.

He’s one of only two Bulldogs to have started every game this year, along with trash-talker-of-the-year candidate Shantay Legans.

Earlier in the season, when it became clear we had seen the last of seniors Renaldo Major and Jonathan Woods and sophomore Terry Pettis, it was simultaneously clear that someone else had to join Legans and sharp-shooting junior Marcus West in the scoring column.

Somebody had to do something.

Al-Sayyad responded with five miserable games. And everybody noticed.

They aren’t noticing his current hot streak. They’re not even expecting it to continue, but if the Bulldogs want to make a run at the WAC tournament title and an NCAA tournament berth, Al-Sayyad must continue his dominance. Ask the trash talker.

“ It makes it easier for our shooters and we personally get open and hit open shots,” Legans said about watching Al-Sayyad dream-shake the competition inside.

If Legans, West and the other shooters don’t get open shots, Fresno State doesn’t win.