The Gators were kicked off the tournament train by the UC San Diego Tritons on March 7 with a 72-65 loss. SF State ended a winning season by watching its twice-beaten opponents continue on to take the California Collegiate Athletic Association Championship Tournament to join the NCAA Division II Regional Finals.

The CCAA Championship tourney boiled down to UC San Diego and Cal Poly Pomona, which barely made it to the tourney with an eighth-place seed. CSU San Bernardino (which didn’t make it past quarterfinals after winning the tourney six times since 2000) and its strongest competition in the past, Cal State Humboldt, are the second and third draws for the NCAA D-II Regional Championships. Both are on the way to Anchorage, Ala., at this very moment.

It was undeniably a tumultuous year for the CCAA—SF State (17-12, 11-9 CCAA) jumped to third place (a five-way tie where it eventually landed in a sixth-place seed, a five-spot jump) while Cal Poly Pomona and Sonoma State both dropped five spots to eighth and ninth places. Cal State L.A. clawed its way up four places and middle-of-the-pack Cal State Stanislaus ended up losing its hold to drop four rungs down the CCAA ladder.

“There were a lot of great things that happened this year,” said SF State men’s basketball coach Bill Treseler. “Future teams are going to have a different confidence level because of it.”
The Gators celebrated a nearly miraculous improvement from a .091 win percentage last season to .586 this time around.

The upsets didn’t end there-—the top four teams could be seen, in wide-eyed shock, shuffling off the hardwood after being defeated by the bottom four teams in the CCAA tournament.

The Gators concluded their winning season on March 7 with the loss to the UC San Diego Tritons. The 20-point deficit at half isn’t something many teams can recover from. In the first half SF State was shooting less than 40 percent to the Tritons’ 62 percent from the field.

The Gators improved to 48 percent during the second half—even their 9-for-14 shooting from behind the arch wasn’t enough to put them less than five points away from the lead.

“I just don’t think we defended like we can in the first half,” Treseler said. The Gators had 11 turnovers and only eight assists to the Tritons’ 22 assists.

Alex Thomas put up 21 points and Chris Rodriguez left his college basketball career behind him with 13 points, five rebounds. CCAA Freshman of the Year Rob Hayes’s tallied up 10 points, four rebounds and two steals.

The Gators had five returning players from last year’s team. Returning guard Thomas had a great season, averaging 12 points per game and had 106 assists. Will Logan, another Gator staple, would be counted on to make good plays and great defense whether he was out on the perimeter or down below along with six points per game and 21 three-point shots.

“I couldn’t be prouder of what these guys accomplished,” Treseler said.

Transfer Darryl Robinson’s raw athleticism is paired with smarts, making him a great defender, Treseler said, and usually dedicated to defending the opponents’ leading scorer. Two other starters —forwards Rodriguez and Martín Flores—were expected to be solid, but even Treseler didn’t know the dynamic duo they would turn out to be. They gathered nearly 20 points and 10 rebounds per game, 29 this season and the two best free-throw percentages the Gators had.

“It really was a good season,” said lone senior Rodriguez. “A real good season…there’s a hundred other teams that couldn’t make it this far.”