UC Riverside’s Zyon Pullin stuns Idaho with go-ahead basket in final seconds
MOSCOW – The UC Riverside Highlanders were determined not to let Idaho’s recent Big Sky Conference player of the week Isaac Jones beat them .
It worked – barely – but it almost didn’t leave enough people to contain Big Sky leading scorer Divant’e Moffitt , who brought Idaho to the brink of an improbable comeback in the closing seconds.
Down 10 points with four minutes to play, Moffitt paced the Vandals with six points down the stretch. With 10 seconds remaining, he slid down the lane past several defenders and put up a floater that tied the score, 74-74.
“Man, I thought for sure we were going to overtime,” he said.
However, Riverside’s Zyon Pullin hit a shot from the baseline for the final two of his team-high 26 points with 1.3 seconds remaining.
The 76-74 loss ended the Vandals’ three-game winning streak and leaves Idaho at 4-6, while the Highlanders improve to 6-3.
Idaho refused to concede.
Rashad Smith ran the baseline before heaving a pass to Jones beyond midcourt. The play called for Jones to tip it to Moffitt. But Jones took an extra beat to corral the contested pass, and while he got the ball to Moffitt, it took Moffitt an additional moment to find the handle. He let fly an off-balance prayer from beyond the arc just as the final buzzer sounded.
“I needed like .1 or .2 more seconds, and that ball would have had hope for sure, I can tell you. I was ready to shoot,” Moffitt said.
Moffitt said Riverside was
“a super-good team, disciplined, poised. This shows we can handle the situation.”
Vandals coach Zac Claus agreed. He said of the Highlanders, “if you can compete with them, you can compete with anybody in our league.”
Averaging 18.3 points per game, Moffitt led all scorers with a career-best 31 points. The Highlanders made a determined effort to surround Moffitt with everybody who wasn’t actively doubling Jones.
Moffitt said he learned early in his basketball career “not to let anybody speed you up. I play at my pace.
“I slow the game down a little bit.”
Two themes that governed the outcome were Riverside’s ability to hit from the perimeter and that Jones got into early foul trouble and missed most of the first half.
The Highlanders hit 29 of 59 shots from the floor, including 8 of 22 3-pointers.
If Idaho had any glaring shortcomings it was failing to aggressively guard outside shooters consistently. Pullin, for example, was 12 for 23 on field goals and hit 2 of 4 3-pointers.
“We got spread out just a little bit” on defense, Claus explained.
Jones, the Big Sky’s second-leading scorer (18.1 ppg), picked up a pair of fouls and was on the bench before the game was five minutes old. He did not return until the second half and finished with six points and four rebounds and played only 17 minutes.
“I like my chances with him on the floor,” Claus said.
But Jones was whistled for his third foul at 15:39 of the second half and picked up a fourth before the end.
The Vandals never led in the game. They briefly got the score tied at 12-12 but were down by 10 points in the first half before drawing within three at the break, 38-35. The Highlanders worked their lead to 10 points again, 52-42, before Idaho came back to within five points, 66-61, as Moffitt hit both ends of a 1-and-1 at the foul line.
Yet again, Riverside built its advantage to 10, 73-63, as Lachlan Olbrich beat Jones on a drive. But the Vandals made one final run to come within 10 seconds of getting to overtime against an opponent who gave the Vandals a good gauge of how they are improving but also how far they need to go.
“We have to keep working. Our practices have to be a bit better,” Claus said.
“As solid as we have been the last two or three weeks. We need to be a little bit sharper.”
Rashad Smith, who had struggled on offense through early games, added 13 for the Vandals, and Nigel Burris followed with 12.
Olbrich backed Pullin with 18 points for the Highlanders before fouling out with 2:38 to play, and Owens scored 11.