Four Nevada players found double figures in the scoring column and the four-time defending Western Athletic Conference champions rolled to an 89-67 win.
“I think we got a lot of what we wanted from tonight,” Nevada coach Mark Fox said. “We have a lot of areas we can learn from and a lot to improve on. We need to get back to work tomorrow.”
Nevada built a 21-point halftime lead, 46-25, but watched San Francisco State open the second half with an 18-6 outburst and trim the Wolf Pack’s lead back to single digits, 52-43.
A pair of free throws by San Francisco State ‘s Robert Hayes kept the Gators in striking distance, 57-47. Any upset hopes San Francisco State had of an upset died from there.
Nevada scored 20 of the next 25 points to push its lead to 77-52 with 6:30 left in the contest and was never threatened again. The Wolf Pack’s largest lead was 26, coming three times, the last at 87-61 after a Richie Phillips dunk with 1:36 remaining.
Junior college transfer Joey Shaw led all scorers. The Wolf Pack’s reserve guard poured in 25 points and grabbed 7 rebounds.
“Joey played well. He’s a good player. We felt like he could make plays. That’s why we recruited him,” Fox said. “Joey was very aggressive. That’s something we were hoping to see from him. “We had a very vanilla package. We didn’t run much so it was nice to see him be aggressive.”
Freshman Luke Babbitt, a Galena High graduate scored 16 points for the Wolf Pack. Sophomore Malik Cooke turned in a double-double for the local squad, finishing with 14 points and pulling down 10 rebounds. Ray Kraemer chipped in 12 points for Nevada.
“We’ll just take it as a learning experience,” Babbitt said. We did some good things and we did some really bad things. The most important thing is we just have a good attitude and get back to work tomorrow.”
The Wolf Pack easily won the rebounding battle against the smaller Gators, 42-29. The Wolf Pack won its fair share of categories on the stat sheet. It outscored its guests 42-26 in the paint, 21-10 off turnovers and 21-4 in transition.
“We just got challenged by a very good team. That’s exactly what our team needs,” San Francisco State coach Bill Treseler said. “That was a great eye opener for us. We won’t see anything close to that even if we go all the way into the NCAA Tournament at our level.”
Nevada pulled away after the first eight-plus minutes of action. A 12-foot jumper by South Tahoe High graduate Vince Cappelino gave San Francisco State a 16-15 lead at the 11:42 mark of the first half. It was the Division II school’s last lead. Nevada outscored the visiting Gators 31-10 into halftime.
San Francisco State was still in the game, down seven at 30-23, following a layup credited to Phoenix O’Rourke on a goaltend call. There was 6:13 still left on the first-half clock at that point, but San Francisco State collapsed from there. Nevada proceeded to score the next 11 points and closed the half on a 16-3 spurt to account for the 46-25 halftime score.
“Our defense was not very good. We had no scouting report and we did not prepare for them, but we still made some fundamental mistakes,” Fox said.
Nevada’s large first-half lead was helped by a disparity at the charity stripe. The Wolf Pack got into the bonus with more than 11 minutes remaining in the first half. Nevada knocked down 16 of 19 free throws in the first 20 minutes. San Francisco State, which did not even attempt a free throw before halftime, was whistled for 16 fouls in the first half.
Will Logan scored 17 points and Ryan Wessels tallied 12 for San Francisco State.
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