A trait every successful college basketball team needs is the ability to close games, something Sacramento State hasn’t seemed to master yet.
The Hornets led for the majority of Saturday’s contest against the California State University Northridge Matadors before allowing a 15-2 run to close the game, spoiling a game with many bright spots.
After carrying an 11-point lead into halftime, Sac State was outscored 47-26 in the second half and dropped its third straight game in a 79-69.
Senior forward Jacob Holt had a career night before he fouled out in the final minutes of play when a Matador defender baited him into a charge, which became a pivotal turning point. Sac State could only muster one basket from that point on, in garbage time, when the game was out of reach.
In the midst of that detrimental late-game run, CSUN upped their intensity on both ends of the court and stunted a Sac State offense that had played well up to then. Sac State head coach Michael Czepil said they felt the pressure of the game in crunch time and played more forced than they needed to.
“It just felt like they were more physical than us,” Czepil said. “It’ll have to be a lot of work on that and the finishing of possessions, both offensively and defensively.”
The dagger on Saturday was an and-one three with less than two minutes to play by junior guard Scotty Washington to extend the Matadors’ lead to 8. Washington had 18 of his game-high 27 in the second half.
CSUN fought their way back with multiple unanswered runs after halftime. Washington and senior forward Keonte Jones were often at the center of those spurts, accounting for 36 of the Matadors’ 47 second-half points.
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At this junction of the season, a big question mark was Sac State’s offense and how it hadn’t been up to snuff. Saturday, the Hornets played their best half of basketball on that end of the floor, but couldn’t find it when it mattered most.
“We can live with the outcome if we’re taking good shots, and I feel like we were getting some in the second half,” junior guard Julian Vaughns said. “But then we started taking some gambles that we wouldn’t normally promote in our offense.”
Sac State sprung open a 31-15 lead in the first half after a 16-0 run. They moved the ball well, charting 11 assists on 13 made shots, and played through their leading scorer of the year, Holt.
The Matadors struggled to defend Holt in the first half, where he had 15 of his career-high 20 points. Sac State made an effort to get the senior the ball in the low post early on, opening up the offense for everyone else. Every Hornet but one that saw the floor in the opening half scored.
“One thing the coaches emphasize is being aggressive,” Holt said. “They want me to be aggressive and they have belief in me to make plays and really play free.”
The Hornets shot 52% in the first half and went 7-of-15 from deep. In the second half, Sac State shot just 32% from the field and made three of its 15 3-point attempts.
Something that kept the Matadors in the game and helped them prevail down the stretch was their free throw shooting. They went 23-of-31 from the charity stripe on Saturday.
The Hornets committed 27 team fouls and Holt said that’s something they need to be better at moving forward.
This is the second time this season that Sac State has blown a first-half lead. The Hornets led by seven on the road against Fresno State and lost, and led by 11 Saturday before slowing spiraling in the second half.
“Discipline. It’s the discipline to be able to finish the game off,” Czepil said. “We played well enough to the point where now you have to go out and win it. The growth for this team is going to be exactly that.”
Sac State will have a week off before they play their next game, giving them time to clean up what has plagued them early in the season. The Hornets face off against the California Golden Bears in Berkeley at 1 p.m. on Nov. 24, in part of two straight road games.
