After falling behind by 14 midway through the second half on Wednesday night, SBCC stormed back with a barrage of 3-pointers, then beat Ventura 81-80 on a triple by Chris Vines with 1:03 remaining.
Daniel Koches scored 21 points, David Lane had 15 and Lucky Teeguarden added 12 (on four 3-pointers) for the Vaqueros (6-17, 2-7), who snapped a three-game WSC North basketball losing streak. Willie Reese had nine points and 10 rebounds.
Vines scored eight points — all in the second half — and then knocked a pass to the post out-of-bounds with 2.1 seconds left. Jordan Harris scored 20 of his game-high 37 points in the second half for the Pirates (7-16, 4-6) but his 19-footer at the buzzer was well off the mark.
“We’ve had a lot of close games,” said Vines, a 6-2 freshman from San Marcos High. “Today was a day when all of us stepped up together. We have a lot of great shooters.”
The Vaqueros trailed 67-53 with 10:41 to play after Harris scored seven straight points. Teeguarden drilled three staight triples, Koches canned another and Reese, a 6-6 forward, hit his second trey of the season during a stretch that saw SBCC drain six in a row. Koches nailed the final one from the left side, capping a 17-2 run that put the Vaqueros up for the first time, 70-69, with 7:31 to play.
The lead see-sawed back and forth until Harris made a layup with 1:10 left to put the visitors up 81-80. Lane dished a pass to Vines on the left side and he calmly made the decisive trey with 63 seconds on the clock.
“It came in transition and Dave had the confidence in me to hit that last one,” said Vines. “We actually practice that a lot and I hit that shot a lot.”
In the second half, SBCC shot 48.5 percent and 58.3 percent (7-12) from 3-point land.
“When Lucky hit those three 3s in a row, that gave us a spark,” noted coach Morris Hodges. “And we stepped up our defense at that time and the guys really dug in. We did a really nice job on defense in the last minute.
“We’ve been in a lot of these games this year. I think it was our time to close the door and get over the hump. I was happy for the guys because they’ve been playing hard and it’s good to get rewarded.”
