The San José State men’s basketball team suffered its sixth consecutive loss against Fresno State 69-57 after the Bulldogs closed the night with an 11-0 run to end the game on Tuesday night at home.
Despite the loss, SJSU senior forward Tibet Gorener broke San José State men’s basketball’s record in 3-pointers and made the 162nd shot of his career. Gorener tied with the previous record holder, Ryan Welage, in Friday’s game against Nevada.
Head coach Tim Miles said Gorener wasn’t worried about breaking the tie going into Tuesday’s game.
“He’s like ‘No Coach, it'll just happen,’ ” Miles said. “ ‘Let's not even worry about it’ and that tells you a lot about who he is.”
Gorener said although it was nice for him to set a record in history, he couldn’t enjoy it because of the game’s outcome.
“It’s nice to have, but I wish it came with a win too,” Gorener said.
SJSU’s loss Tuesday against Fresno was the Spartans eighth loss in their last ten games against the Bulldogs.
After playing head-to-head with the Spartans in the first half, the Bulldogs came out and played better defensively in the second.
Fresno State capitalized on SJSU’s possession struggles scoring 9 points off the Spartans 8 turnovers in the second half.
Miles said the Bulldogs’ aggressive defense kept the Spartans on their heels.
“Some of their (FSU) actions made it hard for us to get around and we didn’t get as many good looks at (the) second half as we did earlier . . . ” Miles said.
Junior guard Alvaro Cardenas led Tuesday’s game with a total of 12 points.
Cardenas said the team’s initial game plan was to play hard defense and keep in mind who the shooters and drivers are on their team, however he said they weren’t able to stick to that plan.
“We just haven't been able to get off the Schneid, the losing streak and I'd hoped that we played better defense,” Miles said. “I thought we did for a while (in the game) and I thought it kind of let us down later in the game.”
Coach Miles said the Spartans committed many defensive errors towards the end of the first half and the team repeated mistakes over and over.
“You're not in a one-on-one game,” Miles said. “You're in a foreigner level class out there against those guys and so some of that's frustrating.”
Miles said being consistent and “sticking to it” is really important to keep in mind for his players as they go into their future games.
Freshman guard Christian Wise was able to score a record-high of eight rebounds to assist the team.
“You look at Christian Wise and you look at his hard work and dedication,” Miles said. “That's allowing him to get in college basketball games, played major college basketball and started to flourish. He didn't get in the game forever.”
Miles said Wise was able to get an increase in minutes the past few games.
“He's putting in a lot of time and his energy level is great,” Miles said. “He can go out and get a rebound and that's where we're really struggling.”
SJSU looks to get its first win in over three weeks when the Spartans are scheduled to play against Colorado State University at 6:30 p.m. on Friday at Moby Arena in Fort Collins, Colo.
