RIVERSIDE, Calif. - UC Riverside men's basketball took to the court for the first time in 25 days on Thursday evening, grinding out a 59-51 win over UC San Diego at the SRC Arena.
With an absence of Zyon Pullin, an all-around team effort on the floor and on the glass helped the Highlanders overcome a late Triton surge for the win.
"I really appreciate our teams no excuses mentality," head coach Mike Magpayo said. "We have a theme of 'next man up' in our program, and our guys stepped up to the challenge against a very good team."
UCR's inside game pushed the Highlanders to an early 6-0 lead after Callum McRae accounted for four of the first six points while four Highlanders grabbed two boards each in the first seven minutes of action.
UCR scored 14 of its first 16 points and 22 of its 27 in the half in the paint.
Flynn Cameron buried UC Riverside's first triple of the night at the 8:39 mark of the first half to extend the lead to 19-11. UC San Diego played catch up with three-point shooting of its own, but inside passing to McRae and Quinton Ford kept the Highlanders a nose ahead in the back-and-forth affair.
Both sides traded threes out of the halftime break with Dominick Pickett draining both of his treys in the early going of the second half. Pickett and McRae eached picked up double doubles on the night, with Pickett's being his first of the year and McRae's being his second.
UC Riverside exploded for a 9-0 run over five minutes in the second half thanks to a three in traffic from Wil Tattersall, who made his first start since November 20. In the same stretch, the Highlanders held UC San Diego without a point for six and a half minutes.
Already with three fouls, JP Moorman II muscled inside and put in a gutsy insurance hook shot with 44 seconds on the clock to give UCR a comfortable 58-51 lead.
UCR is back on the court on Saturday, January 8 at 5:00 p.m. to host UC Irvine in the Big West opener. Out of an abundance of caution, fans are not permitted inside the SRC Arena for the contest. The game will be streamed live on ESPN+ with live stats available on GoHighlanders.com.
