Last year’s bottom-of-the-barrel finish is ancient history to this season’s Gators.

On March 4, the men’s basketball team went on the road to bounce the third-seeded Cal State L.A. Eagles 60-57 to advance to the semifinals of the California Collegiate Athletics Association tournament.

The win was iced with news that the CCAA named head coach Bill Treseler as Coach of the Year and guard Rob Hayes as Freshman of the Year. Hayes and fellow guard Alex Thomas also made the All-Conference second team.

“There was tremendous defensive effort throughout,” Treseler said. “The guys stepped up and made many clutch plays down the stretch. We’re excited about the win and fired up to advance.”

The game of musical chairs was a tough one this season. SF State (18-11, 12-9 CCAA) was one of five teams to jump from the bottom-end of the conference into a five-way tie for third. After an arcane and mind-numbing tie-breaker the Gators finally seeded sixth, while two teams collapsed into the lower depths of the division.

Of the five teams clustered in third, the Gators are the only one of five teams clustered for third who saw unexpected movement in the basketball totem pole.

After the first round SF State, seventh-seeded UC San Diego (16-11, 11-9), fifth-seeded Cal State Dominguez Hills (18-10, 12-9) and—after a huge upset of Humboldt State—eighth-seeded Cal Poly Pomona (12-14, 10-10) will move into the second round.

Against Cal State L.A. junior forward Martín Flores lead the team with 15 points while fellow junior Alex Thomas sunk 14 points, adding three assists and two steals. Rob Hayes, Will Logan and Derek Fletcher had seven points each.

Senior Chris Rodriguez pulled down nine rebounds and had six points—including two free throws during the last 18 seconds of the game to push the Gators from a 57-57 tie into a two-point lead. Darryl Robinson boasted seven rebounds, helping the Gators out-rebound the Eagles 41-to-34.

Even though SF State fell behind in field goals, hitting only 34 percent to the Eagles’ 43 percent, the pure volume of shots (61 to 44) put the Gators in a good position to win.

The Gators made 16 points from Eagle turnovers and another 16 from second-chance shots. Cal State L.A. turned over the ball 14 times and only made five points from the Gator’s nine turnovers.

SF State will play the U.C. San Diego Tritons on March 7 at Cal State San Bernardino. The championship game will be held in San Bernardindo the following night.