Who is UC-Santa Barbara?

by mlmintampa on Mar 16, 2011 5:00 AM EDT in Florida Basketball

The UC-Santa Barbara Gauchos had to win the Big West Tournament to qualify for the NCAAs. Finishing conference play at 8-8, UCSB won three games in the conference tournament, including the final over Long Beach State, who won the league at 14-2. In 2010, UCSB made the tournament as a 15 seed and lost to No. 2 seed Ohio State.

Overall, UCSB is 18-13 this season, but was 4-6 in their last ten regular season games. Their best win was against UNLV in December. The Gauchos only played two games against ranked teams, defeating UNLV and losing to San Diego State.

Statistically, they do not excel at many things. At the close of regular season play, UCSB was ranked in the top-25 of one category: they were 23rd in free-throw shooting (75.5 percent). Their leading scorer is 6-foot-5 junior Orlando Johnson. He averages 21.1 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. He is also UCSB's leading rebounder. Johnson has scored in double digits in all but one of UCSB's games and the one game that he did not score in double figures, the Gauchos won. In the three Big West tournament games, Johnson averaged 28.3 points per game. Junior James Nunnally is the second leading scorer with 16.4 points per game.

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Thanks for this preview piece!

I’m a UCSB fan (grew up there, went to school there for a year before transferring). Btw, another thing you could mention is that the Gauchos were the pre-season favorites to win the conference title but had an up and down year that was disappointing until the tourney. They got hot the last week or so of the season when they made some changes to their defense and strategy and the coach put the team through a boot camp. They are a talented team that somewhat underachieved this year.

So while much is made of the fact that they were an upset winner of conference tourney, I think even the regular season champ Long Beach would admit that it wasn’t really an upset. They are a solid team and have tourney experience after not humiliating themselves against Ohio State last year. ;-)

That said it will be a tough matchup for them today and I expect the Gators to prevail. UCSB will have to play one of their better games to even have a chance. Anything is possible though and I do hope they give your team a good game. Good luck!

PS: A cool story on Gaucho player Orlando Johnson in your local paper here:
http://www.gatorsports.com/article/20110316/COLUMNISTS/110319502/1044?Title=Johnson-8217-s-road-to-NCAAs-paved-with-adversity

There's no need to fear, Underdog is here! / Broncos/Dodgers/Lakers fan in Niners/Raiders/Giants/Warriors country, and damned proud of it.

by underdog on Mar 17, 2011 3:50 PM EDT reply actions