Box Score

SAN DIEGO - Fresno Pacific got a brief scare from last-place Point Loma on Saturday, but the Sunbirds stayed cool and collected in the closing minutes to come away with a 80-72 win.

The Sea Lions' Princeton-style offense and attempt to slow down the game clashed with the Sunbirds' up-tempo style of play but FPU would make some big plays down the stretch to improve to 17-7 overall, 12-4 in the PacWest.

"It's a tough place to play and they're a hard team to play," said head coach Chris Wright. "It's not a great matchup for us with their style of play. I was telling the guys all week we're going to have to play really well to win. I don't think we played particularly well, but we did a lot of good things at big moments in the game. We took care of the glass, that was big. I thought our guys did a good job of fighting through some frustrations and made some pretty smart plays down the stretch. That's where I think we've grown light-years from the beginning of the season."

PLNU took a 65-64 lead with 6:48 to play but the Sunbirds proceeded to go on a 9-0 run to go ahead 73-65. Anthony Brant came up with a big three-pointer, FPU's first of the night, during the run. Malcolm Griffin would drain the final dagger, a jumper with a defender all over him with a minute to play to put FPU ahead 77-69.

"Once we talked during one of the timeouts we bounced back, got some stops, took the lead back and then didn't look back from there," said Griffin afterward. "The last 10 minutes we did a good job of staying poised and staying disciplined, like we have all year. We took good shots down the stretch and when we do that we're going to come away with a win."

The Sea Lions tried to contain FPU leading scorer John Taylor by assigning 6'9" AJ Ussery to guard him and it was mildly effective as Taylor scored 17 points, eight below his season average. When it came to crunch-time though, the Sea Lions once again had no answer for the PacWest's leading scorer.

Antonio Credit added 17 points, 15 of them coming in an outstanding first half, and Griffin finished with 16 points, 10 rebounds and six assists. Matt Samuels battled through an injury to finish with 10 points.

Coming off a 116-point outburst at Academy of Art, FPU made just one three-pointer on the night, but shot 55 percent from the field and out-rebounded the Sea Lions 41-29.

Ussery led the Sea Lions with 13 points as Point Loma fell to 5-20 overall and 2-15 in the PacWest.

FPU travels to the Bay Area to face Notre Dame de Namur on Tuesday night. The Sunbirds then come back home on March 2nd for their final regular season home game vs. California Baptist.

*John Taylor became just the 3rd player in FPU history to reach 600 points in a season. He now has 600 on the year and trails only Scot Paterson (612, 1990-91) and James Lewis 637 (2008-09) on the all-time single season scoring list. Taylor has already set the single-season record for free-throws made (168), breaking the mark of 146 set by Lloyd Gardener in 1966 and Jake Weathers in 1997.