A win here or a loss there can mean the difference between a great season and just a good one. At the end of the 2010-11 campaign, it’s likely that the Chico State and San Francisco State men’s basketball teams will point back to their showdown on January 21 at Acker Gym as a game that made that kind of difference. Tipoff is at approximately 7:30 PM. The Wildcats will also host Cal State Monterey Bay Saturday at 7:30.
Chico State and San Francisco State got off to very strong starts this season and both have stumbled a bit of late. The Wildcats, 9-5 overall and 5-5 in the California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA), have lost four of their last six. San Francisco State is 8-6 overall and 6-4 in the CCAA, but the Gators have dropped five of their last eight.
Friday, one team steadies itself while the other continues to look for a big win to break its fall. If the Wildcats can pull it off – they swept the season series with the Gators last season – they’ll be tied with them for fifth place and still very much in the hunt to finish as high as third in the CCAA.
The Wildcats, 8-1 at Acker Gym this season, will be looking for their sixth straight home win, the longest such streak in Greg Clink’s three years at the helm. If they can make it six, they’ll have a chance to make it seven in a row at home for the first time since 2003-04 on Saturday night.
They’ll be facing Cal State Monterey Bay (5-9, 3-7 CCAA), a team the Wildcats beat for one of those signature wins last season on the way to a surprising 16-12 record. They trailed by 17 points early in the second half before staging a furious comeback in a game they won 74-73 when Jay Flores flipped in a layup at the buzzer in Seaside.
The Otters feature the CCAA’s second-leading scorer in Davion Berry (19.2 points per game) and former Wildcat Darroll Phillips, who averaged a team-high 17.1 points as a junior at Chico State in 2007-08.
Ironically, the team that’s boasted the largest lead in each of the last four meetings between these teams has lost all four.
Flores ranks fourth in the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio at 3.5 and 22nd in assists per game at 5.5 and has a chance to move into Wildcats career top-10 in assists this weekend. With 195 already in just over a year and a half, he needs seven more to match Tony Prescott (1992-94) for 10th on the list with 202. He already ranks seventh on that list among two-year players. Meanwhile, Roderick Hawkins is just 19 rebounds shy of becoming the 11th Wildcat to grab 500 in his career.
Fans can follow every Chico State basketball game live on ESPN 101.7 FM and 1340 AM locally and online through the Wildcat Athletics website, with Mike Baca and Mike Wessels providing the play-by-play.
PREGAME NOTES
