Late comeback allows ’Dogs to escape with win
Andrew Riggs / The Collegian
Fresno State’s Dominic McGuire played a a team-high 35 minutes for the Bulldogs in their 63-54 victory over the Fresno Pacific Sunbirds.
Below: Fresno State point guard Kevin Bell has continued to show improvement on the floor for the Bulldogs with his penetration to the basket and free throw shooting.
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By Darrell Copeland III
The Collegian
It was one of those games where a check in the win column could just be assumed, but as a formality, they go ahead and play the game anyway.
As it turned out, what was supposed to be a runaway win for Fresno State over cross-town rival Fresno Pacific couldn’t have been further away from it. It was easy to find the offensive-minded fan who attended Saturday’s game wincing in pain and turning red with frustration.
All fans though, including the most optimistic Sunbirds fan, probably didn’t expect the 63-54 nailbiting-inducing win it turned out to be for the Bulldogs. In the end, the ever-present struggles on offense was exactly what Fresno State coach Steve Cleveland wanted for his team.
“I’ll tell you what, there isn’t anything better for our program than to have to play a game like this,” Cleveland said.
Cleveland would be talking about his team’s offense, which shot 28.6-percent on 18 of 63 shooting, but still prevailed behind an improving defense that forced the Sunbirds into 18 turnovers.
“You know what, it’s frustrating when you miss a lot of shots that are wide open, but like I told the guys, there’s gonna be two, three maybe four times on the road probably in conference play where shots aren’t going down, and you’re gonna have to find ways to win games,” Cleveland said.
The defensive challenge posed from the Sunbirds — who played what Fresno State’s Quinton Hosley and Ja’Vance Coleman called a sagging man — gave the Bulldogs the opportunity to work on their zone offense, which according to Cleveland, had only been worked on for five minutes this year.
“It was kind of tough for us but we knew that if we just kept clawing and clawing eventually it’s gonna fall,” Hosley said. “I think they chose the right day to do their defense, take nothing away from them, but we also just didn’t make shots.”
Only the shots never really did fall for the Bulldogs, which overcame their offensive struggles with a suffocating defense, which dialed up the tempo even further in the waning moments of the game, creating a flurry of lay-ups and dunks to only slightly pull away from the Sunbirds.
In the end, the Bulldogs were forced to play out of their comfort zone, which makes the win that much more important to Cleveland.
“There were a lot of good things, I think, as far as character building for this basketball team, that we got out of this experience,” Cleveland said.
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