Overtime victory gives Cuesta College shot at another conference championship

For the better part of the last decade, the Cuesta College men’s basketball team has been the class of the Western State Conference.

Under the direction of longtime head coach Rusty Blair, the Cougars have won five of the past seven conference championships and posted four 20-win seasons since 2009.

Following its come-from-behind 89-84 overtime victory against rival Allan Hancock on Wednesday night, Blair couldn’t help but look toward one of the green and white banners hanging inside Cuesta Gym.

The Cougars are 22-8 overall and tied with Moorpark for first in the Western State Conference standings at 8-3. The two teams will meet in the regular season finale Saturday night in Moorpark, and a victory there would give Cuesta its 11th conference championship overall.

“I want to get another spot on the banner for the players that are here to represent our team,” Blair said. “That’s how they’re represented for eternity, on that banner, and they know it. It’s not so much the playoffs; it’s the league championships.

“Those things don’t come around every year.”

Entering Wednesday night’s home finale against the sliding Bulldogs (12-17, 4-8 WSC), the Cougars had lost three of their last four contests. Only one of those setbacks came against an opponent with a winning record — an 82-76 loss to Ventura — and that made for a particularly frustrating two-week stretch.

Cuesta went undefeated through the first half of its conference schedule. A commanding victory over Moorpark on Jan. 27 seemed to indicate the Cougars would have little to no trouble the rest of the way.

“To be truthful, I believe the players thought they won the championship when we beat Moorpark here,” Blair admitted. “They thought it was all over. You can’t do that.”

When it looked like the Cougars’ hopes of a third straight conference title were slipping away, they delivered a resilient performance under pressing circumstances.

Cuesta overcame an 11-point second-half deficit to pull within 75-73 with 42.8 seconds left in regulation. After both teams traded empty possessions, sophomore Evgeniy Moiseev made two free throws with 1.2 seconds remaining to send the game into overtime.

Free throw shooting has been one of the Cougars’ few inconsistent areas throughout an otherwise strong season. They’re shooting a combined 66.6 percent from the free-throw line, and went 14 of 24 (58.3 percent) against Allan Hancock.

“It’s not their fundamentals on that,” Blair said. “It’s completely between the ears.”

Moiseev, a 6-foot-5, 200-pound small forward from Russia, went 6 of 6 at the line in the second half and overtime. He finished the game with 22 points and 11 rebounds in 38 minutes.

Sophomore center Roberto Mantovani — Cuesta’s leading scorer and rebounder — came off the bench and contributed a double-double with 10 points and 12 rebounds before fouling out in 28 minutes.

First-team all-conference point guard Beñat Hevia turned in arguably his best performance of the season, scoring a career-high 27 points to go with seven assists and six rebounds.

Sophomore forward Rafail Eleftheriou added 13 points and five rebounds on a night when Cuesta’s second-leading scorer, speedy freshman Karem Özel, played sparingly off the bench and chipped in four points.

That helped offset a remarkable shooting performance from Allan Hancock sophomore Matt Willkomm. The former Arroyo Grande High standout scored 27 points on 7-for-11 shooting from behind the 3-point line. Willkomm finished his career as the Bulldogs’ all-time leader in 3-pointers made with 148, giving his old hometown team all it could handle for 45 minutes.

“We’re the evil empire,” Blair said. “We’ve won five out of the last seven championships, possibly three straight coming. The motivation is higher because they want to knock off that evil empire.”

It will likely take a similarly balanced effort to defeat Moorpark on its home court Saturday night.

During the first meeting at Cuesta, freshman Andres Aguado came off the bench to score a career-high 26 points on 8-for-9 shooting from behind the 3-point line.

The Raiders (19-8, 8-3 WSC) have gone 5-1 since that loss and had a week off to prepare for the de facto conference championship game.

“How it looked so bleak over the last two weeks and now all of a sudden we’re playing for everything,” Blair said. “I think from the standpoint of a basketball player, I know in my opinion, to play the last game of the season on the road for a conference championship, that’s what it’s all about.”

This story was originally published February 18, 2016 at 2:49 PM with the headline "Overtime victory gives Cuesta College shot at another conference championship."