Box Score SAN RAFAEL, Calif. —  Devin Golston dunked off a pass from Ricky Wofford with 52.4 seconds to play then freshman Matt Hayes and senior Jammall Clark combined to sink five clutch free throws in the final seconds as the Dominican University of California men's basketball team escaped with a 65-58 victory over Hawai'i Pacific University on Wednesday night at the Conlan Center.

It was the Penguins' first win over HPU in eight tries since joining the Pacific West Conference in 2009-10.
The win also avenged a 78-75 road loss to the Sea Warriors (6-8/3-4) on Jan. 9 and allowed the Penguins (9-7/5-3) to move into a fourth-place tie in the 14-team PacWest with idle Chaminade. It improved Dominican's home record to 6-1 this season and two-year record under head coach Booker T. Harris to 13-0 when it has held its opponent to 62 or fewer points.

Dominique Taplin scored seven of his team-high 11 points the second half to lead four Penguins scorers in double figures. Golston, Clark, and Derek Ober all finished with 10 points as Dominican had to rally in the second half after leading by as many as 14 points in the first half.

Clark also topped the Penguins with a game-high seven rebounds as Dominican outrebounded the Sea Warriors 34-26 in the contest, 11-4 on the offensive boards. The Penguins have a record of 9-2 this season when they outrebound their foes.

“We won the war on the glass and they're a big team,” Harris said. “It wasn't pretty. This conference is tough night in and night out.”

Dominican, after missing seven shots in a row and going almost six minutes without a field goal early in the second half, had to rally from a 38-37 deficit. A Jacob Noisat basket with an assist from Wofford (who was credited with three in the game) with 10:50 to play gave the Penguins the lead for good, but they had to sweat out the win. Three-point  shots by Hayes and Taplin keyed an 11-0 run by Dominican to build its advantage to eight points, 49-41, with 6:26 to go yet HPU chipped away, closing to within two points, 58-56, before Wofford set up Golston for the crucial slam dunk.

Defensively, Dominican was much better than the last time it played HPU. The Penguins held the cold-shooting Sea Warriors scoreless for a span of almost eight minutes in the first half and didn't allow one offensive rebound in the opening 20 minutes. The defensive highlight, however, was a blocked shot by the 6-foot-6 Clark on Iranian center Farbod Farman, who is listed at 6-foot-11.

Offensively, the Penguins, who scored 45 points in the final 13 minutes of their game at Hawai'i Pacific, weren't efficient on Wednesday yet they still managed to score 16 consecutive points in the first half. Ober had seven of his nine first-half points in that stretch, beginning with a three-pointer. Freshman Christopher Schwartz-Edmisten also netted a trey and Golston capped the 16-0 run with a hoop to build Dominican's advantage to 20-10 with 5:44 remaining in the half.

A Golston hoop off a Myles Carrillo assist (one of three) extended the Penguins' lead to 14, 29-15, before Malte Ziegenhagen, a sophomore from Berlin, Germany, finally got hot. Ziegenhagen, who scored 26 points the last time the teams met, scored six of HPU's final nine points on the first half which ended at 33-24. Ziegenhagen was held to 14 points for the game and teammate Kawika Lyons, the PacWest's leading three-point shooter, missed four of five attempts from beyond the arc.

Dominican returns to PacWest action on Saturday, Jan. 26 when it travels to Belmont, Calif. to play Bay Area rival Notre Dame de Namur. Game time is 7:30 p.m.