Keelhaulers Advance to Championship Game
By Thomas Gase-Vallejo Times Herald
For the last five years, the bread and butter for the Cal Maritime's men's basketball team has been its defense. Saturday night against UC Merced was no different for the Keelhaulers.
Cal Maritime didn't allow UC Merced to have double-digit points until less than six minutes remaining in the first half as the Keelhaulers held the Golden Bobcats (9-14) to a 31 percent shooting percentage in the half on the way to a 65-55 victory.
The win in the California Pacific Conference Tournament semifinals puts Cal Maritime (22-9) just one win away from its fifth straight trip to the NAIA Division II tournament in Missouri.
On Monday at 7:30 p.m. the Keelhaulers will play La Sierra, which beat Simpson 87-81 in the other semifinal.
Highlighted by four points from Cal Maritime senior Zach Davis and one 30-second violation stop, the Keelhaulers went up 9-0 after the first four minutes and never looked back.
"I thought our defense was the difference," Cal Maritime head coach Bryan Rooney said. "It helped us get off to a 9-0 start and we kept UC Merced at that distance for most of the night. I think that sent a message to our own team when we went on the run. The message was that we were dialed in. I'm very proud of the group tonight in that we stayed who we are."
A tip-in by Kameron Hoyt put the Keelhaulers up 19-5, but UC Merced stayed relatively close until Cal Maritime's Roman Delgado hit three 3-pointers in a two-minute stretch to put the Keelhaulers up 31-15 with about four minutes left in the half.
"I was shooting the ball well and my teammates were doing a good job of setting up screens and getting me the ball," Delgado said.
Rooney was also thrilled with the way his guard shot the ball on Saturday. Delgado finished with 12 points on four 3-pointers.
"He's a big-game player," Rooney said. "He's been here the last two years and I can't think of a big game where he hasn't shown up. That comes from the amount of time he spends putting in the extra effort of staying late in the gym and working on his shot."
UC Merced kept the game close though. The Golden Bobcats trailed by just 11 points at the half and then cut the lead to just seven points after they went on a 8-0 run, highlighted by a 3-pointer from Michael Pierick, who finished with six 3-pointers and 25 points.
Cal Maritime remained calm, however, and answered with a 12-0 run of its own just a few minutes later to make the score 60-41 with just under five minutes left.
The run was highlighted by a layup from Davis, a floater by Alec Fetzer, a 3-pointer by Daniel Radford and a steal and layup from Devin Williams.
"I thought after we allowed the 8-0 run, we had to go back to being us," Rooney said. "We were losing the shooter on defense and weren't being as diligent."
Delgado agreed with his coach.
"The last time we played UC Merced (a week ago) we had a big lead in the second half and they came back," Delgado said. "We had to take our time, play good defense and settle down. We needed to take care of the basketball and get some stops."
They also apparently needed to give Davis the ball a little more inside.
The senior finished with a team-high 18 points, 11 of which came in the second half. He also had a team-leading eight rebounds.
"I had a lot of room inside because we were sharing the ball well tonight and our shooters hit a lot of 3's tonight, a lot of 3's," Davis said. "Since we were hitting all those 3's it gave me more room to operate inside."
Davis said that the team can't wait to play on Monday, but there are things the Keelhaulers need to improve.
"We definitely need to put a hand in shooters' faces a little more and contest more shots," Davis said. "Rebounding is also huge and we need to keep our opponent off the offensive glass."