FRESNO, Calif. – The Chaminade University men's basketball was hoping to return to the islands with a clean sweep of their Northern California and Central Valley road trip.
Instead, they return home 2-1 after suffering a 112-108 loss in double overtime to Fresno Pacific Saturday at the Special Events Center.
Three Silverswords hit the 20-point mark, led by
Sam Daly's career-high 26.
Rohndell Goodwin had 24 while
Kiran Shastri added 21 as they fell to 11-7 overall and 7-4 in the Pacific West Conference.
Mike Crawley went for a game-high 27 for the Sunbirds (3-13, 3-6 PacWest).
The 120 combined points broke the previous PacWest record of 119 when BYU-Hawai'i defeated Academy of Art, 112-107, on Jan. 24, 2014. The game also featured 17 ties and 17 lead changes.
Austin Pope had his third consecutive double-double with a 16-point, 13-rebound performance in the loss while
Kuany Kuany had 13 points and nine boards. Both Pope and Daly had five assists.
Neither team could build a large lead over the other in the contest with Chaminade's biggest lead being four and FPU eight, both coming early in the second half. After the Sunbirds grabbed a 52-44 lead just minutes into the second half, a 14-2 run behind Pope's five points and Shastri's two 3-pointers put the visitors up 58-54 with 13 minutes left to play. From there, the combatants slugged it out until the end of the regulation. Down 93-90, Goodwin buried a clutch triple with 30 seconds left to send the contest into overtime.
Chaminade was again down towards the end of overtime but Kuany's putback with 19 seconds left tied the game at 101 resulting in a second overtime, the Silverswords' first double OT game since February 2014.
FPU grabbed a 107-105 lead with a minute left in the second overtime but Shastri came through clutch again, drilling a 3-pointer from 25 feet out on the left wing to give Chaminade a 108-107 lead with 48 seconds left. But Crawley's putback 15 seconds later pushed the Sunbirds ahead on the next possession. Daly's short jumper on the ensuing CUH possession failed to drop and Crawley made three free throws in the final 17 seconds to seal the upset.
Shastri moved into ninth past Zach Whiting in the program's all-time scoring list with 1,380. Meanwhile Kuany remained sixth at 1,458 points but his nine boards gave him 802, becoming only the third player in program history to reach 800 career rebounds.
The Silverswords return to McCabe Gym Thursday to face BYU-Hawai'i. It will be the final meeting in the 41-year history of the rivalry between the two programs.
