The Cal Poly men’s basketball team is preparing for its final two regular season games, focusing on improving its seed for the upcoming Big West Championship tournament scheduled for March 11-14. Having already secured a place among the eight qualifiers, Cal Poly (13-17, 9-9) will face UC Irvine on Thursday and host Cal State Bakersfield on Saturday. Both games will be available via ESPN+.
Cal Poly currently sits eighth in the conference standings but remains just two games behind third-place teams UC San Diego and CSUN, with an opening-round bye still within reach. The Mustangs have won four of their last five games and have achieved their highest number of Big West wins since the 2012-13 season.
Sophomore guard Hamad Mousa has been central to Cal Poly’s success this year, ranking as the nation’s 27th-leading scorer at 20.4 points per game. He also leads the Big West in scoring and is one of only two players from Qatar competing in Division I basketball this season. Mousa has reached double-digit points in 29 out of 30 appearances and recently scored a career-high 34 points at CSUN.
“Cal Poly captured this year’s season series opener on Feb. 12 (79-73) to stem a seven-game slide against the Anteaters,” according to program officials regarding Thursday’s matchup with UC Irvine. “The Mustangs next pursue their first road win against UC Irvine since a 79-66 victory on Jan. 26, 2017 and first yearly sweep of the Anteaters since the 2011-12 season.”
Looking ahead to Saturday’s contest: “After sweeping last year’s series and capturing this year’s opener on Jan. 29 (104-79), Cal Poly seeks its first four-game winning streak against Cal State Bakersfield since taking four straight between the 1978-79 and 1980-81 seasons,” officials stated.
Cal Poly has established itself as one of college basketball’s top three-point shooting teams, ranking fifth nationally in attempts per game (32.6), eleventh in made threes per game (11), and fourteenth in total threes made (329). The Mustangs have hit multiple three-pointers in most matchups this season, including a high of eighteen during a win over Cal State Fullerton.
Free throw shooting has also been strong for Cal Poly; they rank tenth nationally with a program record mark of nearly seventy-nine percent from the line this season.
Mousa needs just seven more points to become only the second player in program history to score six hundred points in a single season—a milestone not reached since Stuart Thomas did so during the early nineties.
Other key contributors include sophomore Cayden Ward, who averages fourteen-and-a-half points per game and leads Cal Poly with over six rebounds per contest, as well as Peter Bandelj, who set a new school record by making nine three-pointers in one game earlier this year.
Freshman Jess Esso Essis has provided additional scoring off the bench, averaging nearly nine points across his seven appearances so far.
Cal Poly’s roster reflects international diversity with players from nine different countries—more than any other Division I program except UT Martin—and is unique among NCAA teams for representing all six habitable continents or regions.
Additionally, Cal Poly was one of just five Division I programs that did not lose any players to transfer during last offseason—a group that includes Duke University and Tennessee.
In professional news related to alumni: “Cal Poly saw a second Mustang alum make his NBA debut on Oct. 22 when guard Kobe Sanders (2020-24) – drafted 50th overall by the New York Knicks in June before being traded to the Clippers – appeared for Los Angeles.” Sanders joins David Nwaba as former Mustangs who have played in an NBA game.
