FULLERTON — Cal State Fullerton was down by nine points late in the second half against UC Davis on Saturday and staring at the possibility of a third straight loss to end the regular season. But losing wasn’t on E.J. Anosike’s mind.
It was senior night, and the fifth-year transfer had flown his mother in from New Jersey to watch him play his final game at Titan Gym. Other family members came from Washington D.C. and Colorado.
“I wasn’t going to lose in front of my mother,” Anosike said.
So, he went to work. Anosike scored half of Fullerton’s final 16 points as the Titans outscored the Aggies by 12 over the last four minutes to win, 62-59. Anosike finished with 20 points and eight rebounds to lead Fullerton (18-10 overall, 11-4 Big West Conference).
Jalen Harris drew a crucial charge with Fullerton ahead 58-57 and less than 10 seconds left, then he knocked down four clutch free throws to seal the victory for the Titans. A 12-2 run by UC Davis (12-10, 5-6) have given the Aggies the advantage lead late in the second half, as Fullerton endured a three-minute scoring drought.
Fullerton will head into next week’s Big West Tournament as the No. 2 seed, coming off a regular season in which it reached 11 conference wins and 18 wins overall for the first time in Coach Dedrique Taylor’s nine-year tenure.
“I think it’s a huge momentum boost in terms of us seeing a ‘W’ in the column for our last time out,” Taylor said. “One thing I said to this group is, ‘We’ll never get this group again and have the opportunity to compete out on the Titan floor.’”
Taylor said the team has needed to rally late in games before.
“As a coach, I don’t want to be in that situation,” Taylor said. “But with their experience, they know how to get themselves out of that situation and tonight it was no different.”
Harris added 14 points and Tray Maddox Jr. had 12.
The teams combined for 19 turnovers in a sluggish first half, but a pair of 3-pointers by Harris late in the half gave the Titans a 30-23 lead at halftime.
UC Davis shot just 1 for 11 from 3-point range in the first half, though its highlight came at the 14:52 mark, when Ezra Manjon recorded his 1,000th career point for the Aggies on a layup.
Caleb Fuller led the Aggies in scoring with 18 points to go along with five rebounds and four assists.
Fullerton and Long Beach State started the week tied for first place in the Big West standings, with LBSU holding the tiebreaker. But the Titans’ home loss to UC Riverside on Thursday coupled with LBSU’s victory over UC Davis assured Long Beach of the top seed in the conference tournament.
Long Beach then beat UC Riverside, 73-72, in overtime on Saturday to clinch the Big West regular-season title outright.
Five Fullerton seniors – Anosike, Damari Milstead, Jalen Harris, Landis Spivey and Ibrahim Famouke Doumbia – were honored before the game as part of Senior Night festivities.
With six teams boasting at least eight conference wins this season, Taylor believes the Big West Tournament is wide open. He said it was one of the reasons he took the job at Fullerton.
“That just shows how tough this conference can be,” Taylor said. “To win the conference is something special. To win the conference tournament I think is even more special. Very rarely are teams able to do both the same year.”
Anosike, who is finishing his collegiate career after playing on three teams – jumping from Sacred Heart in Connecticut to Tennessee to Fullerton – hopes to cap the journey with a Big West Tournament championship. He didn’t have a single Division I offer out of high school, heard pundits call him a Division III-caliber player and didn’t play much his freshman year.
The work isn’t done for Anosike, the youngest of eight siblings who played in front of his mother for the first time in two years on Saturday. He remembers that the media picked Fullerton to finish eighth in the Big West in the preseason poll.
“My expectation is that we’re going to win it all,” Anosike said. “We’re going to play with a chip on our shoulder. They doubted us going in. They picked us eighth to win the league. The work’s not done and it’s too late to fail. There’s no turning back and we got to get the job done.”
UP NEXT
Fullerton will either seventh-seeded UC Davis or 10th-seeded Cal Poly (7-20, 2-12) in a Big West Tournament quarterfinal on Thursday at 6 p.m. in Henderson, Nevada.
BIG WEST TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE
(all games at Dollar Loan Center, Henderson, Nev.)
Tuesday (first round)
No. 8 seed Cal State Northridge vs. No. 9 Cal State Bakersfield, 6 p.m.
No. 7 seed UC Davis vs. No. 10 Cal Poly (SLO), 8:30 p.m.
Thursday (quarterfinals)
No. 1 seed Long Beach State vs. CSUN-CSUB winner, noon
No. 4 seed UC Irvine vs. No. 5 UC Santa Barbara, 2:30 p.m.
No. 2 seed Cal State Fullerton vs. UCD-SLO winner, 6 p.m.
No. 3 seed Hawaii vs. No. 6 UC Riverside, 8:30 p.m.
Friday (semifinals)
TBD vs. TBD, 6 p.m. (early quarterfinal winners)
TBD vs. TBD, 8:30 p.m. (late quarterfinal winners)
Saturday (championship game)
TBD vs. TBD, 8:30 p.m. (ESPNU)
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