Bulldogs men hit foul shots down the stretch, outlast Air Force for first road win

Fresno State won a basketball game on Thursday while committing 20 turnovers, which is not all that easy to do.

The Bulldogs hadn’t pulled that off since 2016.

But there were a number of oddities in a 69-63 victory over Air Force at Clune Arena in Colorado Springs.

One: the Bulldogs made their foul shots in the second half and down the stretch, something they have struggled to do throughout all of the starts and stops in a coronavirus-truncated season.

Two: Orlando Robinson, the Bulldogs’ leading scorer, made it through the first half without taking a shot and finished with one and one make in scoring six points.

They also, for two critical possessions down the stretch, were able to keep the basketball out of the hands of Falcons guard A.J. Walker, who in the other 38 minutes that he was on the floor scored a career-high 33 points, making 8 of 16 shots and going 11 of 11 at the line while adding three assists.

“We had (Isaiah Hill), Junior (Ballard), Kyle (Harding) and Devin Gage for a lot of time and Jordan Campbell for a lot of time,” coach Justin Hutson said of the Bulldogs who took turns guarding Walker. “We were trying to make other people take shots the whole game, so that shows you either how good he was or how inept we were at that.”

Inept or not, Fresno State (8-7, 6-7 in the MW) managed to get by and win on the road for the first time this season.

The foul shots were critical for a team that had struggled at the free throw line just about all season – they went in hitting just 63.1% of their free throws, ranking 10th in the conference.

Fresno State in the final eight minutes attempted only two shots and made one, a layup by Ballard, who led the Bulldogs with 17 points. The rest of the time, it was free throws and turnovers.

Robinson missed the front end of a 1-and-1 with 7:55 to go, but got the offensive rebound and was fouled. Both foul shots went down that time, and the Bulldogs hit 10 of 12 the rest of the way including 6 of 6 in the final minute.

“I thought the group that we had in at the end fought and finished the game out,” Hutson said. “I thought that was very important. They fought and finished the game out, made big free throws and had big stops at the end.”

This story was originally published February 11, 2021 at 10:07 PM.