The public came to the Thunderdome last week to watch UCSB basketball games for the first time since March 2020. The Gaucho women had fans squirming in the new chair-back seats, while the men’s team attracted students with a hamburger giveaway and kept them standing and cheering a highlight show. Here’s how it went down.
JPL Takes Flight: The Gaucho men’s 119-65 blowout of San Francisco State might have been boring except for the coming-out-and-up party of Josh Pierre-Louis. The 6′4″ junior was a one-man wrecking crew in the first half, as he scored 22 points, many of them on high-flying dunks. He finished the game with 25 points and four assists on passes that also had a creative touch.
“The best athlete I’ve ever coached,” gushed Joe Pasternack, UCSB’s fourth-year coach, who had previous stops at Arizona and Cal.