OCEANSIDE, Calif. – Five Cougars finished in double figures as the No. 1 Cal State San Marcos men's basketball team cruised to a 90-65 victory over visiting Trinity Western on Tuesday night at MiraCosta College.
Tony Freeland led all scorers with 15 points on 6-of-8 shooting while adding five rebounds in just his second game in Cougar blue. Three players –
Julian Camper,
Dayton Boddie and
Akachi Okugo – pitched in 12 points.
Blake Nash lit up the stat sheet, finishing with 11 points, nine assists, six rebounds and five steals.
The Cougars improve to 12-1 overall with the victory, while TWU drops to 1-10.
TWU, based in British Columbia, Canada, took advantage of a lackluster start by the Cougars and would led by two five minutes into the game. However, CSUSM retook the lead and would use an 11-0 stretch to increase its lead to 13, 43-40, after back-to-back layups by Camper with four minutes remaining in the half.
CSUSM led 48-36 at the break as all nine Cougar players who appeared in the stanza scored for the Cougars.
Another 11-0 run capped by a 3-pointer from Nash and a jumper from Collie made the Cougar lead 68-45 with 11:28 remaining and the game turned into a rout.
Boddie had a pair of highlight-reel worthy dunks in the game, first converting an alley-oop pass from Freeland before slamming home an outlet pass from
Declan Daly.
The Cougars had 22 assists on their 36 field goals, their second-highest assist total of the season. CSUSM shot 49.3 percent for the game.
CSUSM forced a season-high 27 turnovers and converted those Spartan miscues into 18 points. The Cougars received 33 points off the bench.
The Cougars will travel to Arizona for three games in a span of three days. CSUSM starts the tournament off Thursday at 5 p.m. against Lethbridge, another squad from Canada.