ANAHEIM, CALIF. >> Most of the way, it was a game only parents could love. And maybe not even them.
In the end, UC Davis was just fine with winning ugly.
The second-seeded Aggies punched their first NCAA Tournament berth in their relatively brief Division I era with a 50-47 win over top-seeded UC Irvine in the Big West championship game on Saturday night at the Honda Center.
Davis (22-12) shot in the mid-30s but held Irvine (21-14) in that neighborhood and forced 20 turnovers on the Anteaters.
“The best defensive team is going to walk away with the biggest prize and go dancing,” Davis coach Jim Les said. “And these guys, for these three games, were dominant on the defensive end. We weren’t always pretty offensively, but our defense won us this championship and gave us this opportunity.”
Guard Brynton Lemar scored 11 of Davis’ last 13 points, rallying his team from a five-point deficit with 4:09 to play. Forward Chima Moneke had nine points and seven rebounds a day after his buzzer-beating putback got Davis to the championship game over Cal State Fullerton.
On the game’s signature play, Lemar killed clock beyond the arc in the final minute as he and Big West player of the year Luke Nelson (14 points) jawed at each other. Nelson got trapped on a screen and Lemar exploded to the rim, earning a goal-tending call and a 48-44 lead with 13.1 seconds left. Lemar finished with 20 points.
“It was great,” Lemar said of the exchange. “I told him, ‘I worked too hard for this. I was not going to let this slip away.’ He said, ‘all right, let’s see it.’ I took it as a challenge. I’m not going to back down from nobody.”
Nelson hit a catch-and-shoot 3 with 7.3 seconds left, but Lemar made both foul shots with 5.8 seconds to go and Irvine had two inbounds attempts disrupted in the final 2.6 seconds as time expired.
Making the result more stunning, Irvine routed Davis 79-49 for the outright Big West regular-season title last Saturday.
“It was all strategery … we wanted them to be overconfident,” Les said with a grin.
Said Moneke, “I didn’t want anyone else. I knew we could beat them. … The fans at the end of that game were chanting some things we didn’t like and we took it to heart.”
Especially in the first half, both teams struggled mightily to throw the ball in the vicinity of the hoop. It was the second-lowest combined point total of any Big West final.
Irvine committed nine turnovers in the first 10 minutes, contributing to an offense-starved first half in which Davis shot 34.5 percent and still led by eight at intermission — 24-16.
Click here to see more photos.
