Graduate forward Hosana Kitenge pumps up the crowd after making a bucket. Courtesy of UCSB Athletics

For the first time in over three years, the UC Santa Barbara men’s basketball team walked away with a win over the UC Irvine Anteaters on Saturday, Feb. 7th. There was only one word to describe the affair when all was said and done: chaotic. The Gauchos kept pace in a hectic first half being played in front of an absolutely raucous crowd at the Thunderdome, exploded out of the gates in the second half and then weathered a late comeback attempt by the Anteaters on their way to an 84-79 victory. 

With the student section filled to capacity, tensions were already running high by the time the referee threw up the ball at tipoff. Irvine’s 6-foot-10 center, senior Kyle Evans, won the tipoff, and the Anteaters converted their first bucket; the Gauchos, while undersized on defense, found a way to score and kept the game within single digits until they took their first lead with 4:07 to go in the half. Junior forward Colin Smith scored a 3-pointer to put Santa Barbara ahead 26-24 and turned to the crowd with his signature kiss of the three-finger celebration, which was met with a roar of delight from the home fans. 

Irvine quickly tied the game, but the Gauchos went on an 8-2 run to end the half, capped off by graduate center Hosana Kitenge’s graceful turnaround jumper as time expired, evoking an image of the great Dirk Nowitzki and his signature shot. The Gauchos came out of the locker room as energetically as they entered it, with their lead ballooning to 16 as the score stood at 55-39 at the 11:31 mark in the second half. With a comfortable lead, one would expect a composed stretch of gameplay as the Gauchos looked to ice the rest of the game. Instead, all hell broke loose in the Thunderdome. 

UC Irvine freshman guard Ben Egbo was seemingly the unexpected catalyst for a chaotic flurry of events at the 10:10 mark in the second half. Egbo lost control of the ball, and it appeared to roll off his leg and out of bounds for Santa Barbara possession. Irvine head coach Russell Turner, in his 16th season with the team, said something to a nearby referee that earned him a technical foul. Incensed, Turner started walking to the center of the court where the referees gathered and began to plead his case. At this point, Santa Barbara head coach Joe Pasternack had a positively livid reaction to the situation as he tried to rush to the referee’s huddle himself. 

Pasternack was whistled for a technical foul of his own as he was physically held back by several members of his coaching staff; even Kitenge, the energetic sparkplug for the Gauchos, had to come over and restrain his coach from earning another infraction. Turner, still seething at his first technical, continued to jaw at the referees until they could put up with him no longer and tossed him from the game with his second tech. 

Senior guard Aidan Mahaney knocked down both technical free throws as order was restored on the court, and the Gaucho’s lead was extended to 21 by the 8-minute mark of the half after a Mahaney triple. Mahaney was quickly whistled for his own technical foul after holding three fingers up to his face as he ran past an Irvine player in celebration, earning the disapproval of the referee. The Anteaters wouldn’t go down without a fight after they converted both technical free throws, and in the absence of their head coach they began to chip away at a Gaucho lead that was held by a team that seemed increasingly comfortable to take their foot off the gas and merely play the clock.

The Gaucho lead was reduced to just 5 points with 42 seconds remaining in the game after sixth-year graduate guard Andre Henry hit back-to-back threes, the second basket accompanied by an and-one free throw that sent every fan’s heart racing. However, with so little remaining, the Anteaters were forced into the foul game, and Santa Barbara’s closing lineup hit their free throws to seal the 84-79 victory. Kitenge had a highlight defensive play to end a fantastic night from the big man at the 5:59 mark in the second half when he recreated Lebron James’s iconic chasedown swat of Andre Iguodala in the 2016 National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals, sending Anteater freshman guard Tama Isaac’s shot ricocheting off the glass.

Mahaney led the team with 21 points on 7-12 shooting from the field in 39 minutes, providing the scoring spark and composure that Pasternack’s lineup desperately needed from him in the absence of junior guard Miro Little for the second straight game. Smith shot 6-11 from the field on the way to 17 points with 7 rebounds, and freshman guard CJ Shaw and Kitenge added 15 and 12 points, respectively. Sophomore forward Zion Sensley secured his fifth double-double of the season with 10 points and 13 rebounds. 

The Gauchos let up 44 points in the paint, with their smaller front court undermatched against Irvine’s gargantuan big men. However, the battle on the glass belonged to Santa Barbara, as they outrebounded the Anteaters 37 to 27, with 13 of those coming on the offensive glass. The Gauchos also shot 50.9% from the field on the night, a great outing against an Irvine team whose opponents average only 37% from the field on average. 

Santa Barbara improved to a 9-4 conference record with the win and unseated UC Irvine from the top spot after Hawai‘i moved ahead of Irvine for the top spot in the Big West after their Feb. 7 win against UC San Diego. 

The Gauchos go on the road for their next two games, traveling south to take on the UC Riverside Highlanders on Feb. 12 before their second rendition of the Blue-Green rivalry of the season at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo on Feb. 14.