Powerful UC San Diego cruises to 85-60 win over UC Davis in Big West men's basketball

Aggies look to finish strong with four of final five games at home

LA JOLLA - UC San Diego never trailed in a dominating 85-60 rout of UC Davis in a Big West men's basketball contest Saturday afternoon before a crowd of 2,003 in LionTree Arena.

The win pushes the Tritons to 22-4 overall and 12-2 in the Big West, while the Aggies slip to 15-11 and 9-6 with five games left in the regular season.

"We got very passive on defense and against a good team that plays with some pace, that just wasn't enough," said Aggie head coach Jim Les.

"They're a team that's playing with confidence, they know they're good and we needed to come out swinging and take the fight to them. They're good, but we made them look better than they are."

The game was tied at 9-9 after UCD's Niko Rocak banged home a 3-pointer, but UCSD responded with a 17-2 spurt and led, 52-31, at half.

The Aggies scored the first six points of the second half, only to have San Diego's Tyler McGhee go on a personal 9-0 run to push the advantage to 63-39.

UCSD enjoyed its biggest lead of the night at 68-41 and coasted to its seventh straight win from there.

"We played pretty well from start to finish," said an obviously pleased Triton head coach Eric Olen.

"We're a good basketball team and we're playing good basketball. We played well on both sides and we were able to separate early."

Olen said that stopping UC Davis scoring machine TY Johnson was key to the outcome.