Augusta State Falls Short of Cal Poly Pomona 74-70 in Elite Eight

SPRINGFIELD, MASS – Despite rallying from an 11-point deficit with under five minutes to play to take the lead, the Augusta State Jaguars could only manage two points over the final two minutes and fell to Cal Poly Pomona in the semifinals of the NCAA Elite Eight in Springfield, Mass. With the loss, Augusta State’s season comes to a close with a 30-5 record while Cal Poly Pomona (25-7) advances to the national championship game on Saturday.

“We got outplayed tonight,” said ASU head coach Dip Metress. “Give Cal Poly all the credit in the world, they hurt us in transition, we just didn’t play very well.”

The Jaguars were down 63-52 with 5:59 to play following a layup from CPP’s Robert Summers, but responded with a 14-2 run over the next two and half minutes to take a 66-65 lead, their first lead since 2-0 in the first half. Ben Madgen keyed the rally with back-to-back three-pointers, the only two the junior made in the game, followed by five straight points from Daniel Dixon.

Pomona went back up on a Larry Gordon layin, which was answered by a layup from Garret Siler to give ASU a 68-67 lead with 2:04 to play. But the Jaguars would get only one more bucket, a put-back from Fred Brathewaite with 39 seconds left, as Cal Poly finished the game with a 7-2 run.

“Whenever you take off your jersey, you feel like you’ll have another game to play,” said Siler, who finishes his career as the NCAA’s all-time career leader in field goal percentage. “We’ve been successful, we’ve put a lot of hard work in the program. I told the team in the locker room that they have to get back to this point.”

ASU struggled in the first half, hitting only one of nine three-pointers, but were only down three with 12:35 to go in the period. The Broncos went on a 14-7 run over the next five minutes to open up their first double-digit lead 23-13 following a three-pointer from Walter Thompson. ASU cut that back to four with layups from Siler, Dixon and Greg Hire. A Fred Brathwaite alley-oop dunk cut the lead to two with 4:16 to go in the first and the Jaguars trailed 31-27 at the half.

“Our transition defense really hurt us,” said Metress. “We missed some shots, but we didn’t really take any bad shots. We were doing some good things, but we might have used too much energy to get back into it.”

Siler opened the second half with a layup to cut the lead to two, but Pomona got a three-pointer from Gordon to push the lead back to five. That lead grew back to 10 with 8:49 to play following two free throws from Summers and reached 11 for the first time with 7:23 to go on a Gordon layup.

Brathwaite hit nine of 13 shots from the floor to lead ASU with 21 points. He also added seven rebounds. Siler added 17 and a game-high nine boards while Madgen finished with 12 and Dixon 10. The Jaguars hit 23% from three-point range, their second-lowest output of the season, and seven of 14 free throws, their lowest percentage this year.

Gordon led Cal Poly Pomona with 20 points and 11 rebounds. Tobias Jahn, Thompson and Summers each scored 11 for the Broncos, who advance to their first championship game. Cal Poly Pomona outrebounded Augusta State 36-31 and hit half of their 10 three-point attempts and shot 70% (19-27) from the free throw line. CPP will face the winner of the Findlay/Central Missouri State game on Saturday at 1:00 pm.

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