SAN RAFAEL, Calif. – With several key baskets in the final minute, the Dominican University of California men's basketball team topped Notre Dame de Namur 63-57 on Friday night for its fourth-consecutive win.
At halftime, Dominican Athletics honored facilities and maintenance employee Willie Long, who is celebrating his 45th year at the university. Long has demonstrated service, passion, and commitment for Dominican and the men's basketball squad showed its own drive and determination on Friday night.
The result improves the Penguins' marks to 9-14 overall and 8-9 in the PacWest to rank eighth in the conference standings. NDNU falls to 4-18 overall and 2-14 in the PacWest. In the current four-game winning streak, Dominican has picked up three victories of six points or less.
It proved to be a defensive struggle on Friday. The Penguins were outrebounded 37-23 but outshot the visitors 49.0 percent to 40.4 percent. Dominican forced 19 turnovers from the Argonauts.
Entering the final 100 seconds of Friday's contest, the Penguins held a slim 56-54 edge. In that last stretch of action, Dominican received a pair of clutch shots from
Josh Ramirez and two key free throws by
Ryo Tawatari to wrap up the six-point win.
Tawatari finished with 14 points, matching
Jeremiah Gray for the team lead on Friday.
Reverend Maduakor added 11 points along with a team-best six rebounds. As a team, the Penguins went 8-for-18 from three-point range.
The two teams stayed close for most of the first half, until Dominican earned a late rally. A
Quentin Mendoza triple pushed the margin to 11 points before NDNU trimmed it back down to 30-23 heading into the break.
A jumper from
Henry Uwadiae at the 11:09 mark brought the distance back to double digits momentarily but for the most part, the Argonauts remained within striking distance for most of the second half.
With 4:37 remaining, Gray put down a reverse, one-handed slam after driving the baseline and drawing the foul. That brought the Dominican crowd to its feet and the narrow victory gave them even more to cheer about.
Friday marked the first of four home games to conclude the regular season. Up next will be a 7:30 p.m. matchup on Thursday against Concordia.
