AZUSA, Calif. -- It took almost four months for Azusa Pacific to get a second chance to play Cal Poly Pomona, but the motivation to avenge an overtime defeat in the second game of the season drove the top-seeded Cougars to a fast start and a relentless finish in a 77-67 win in Saturday's NCAA Division II West Region semifinals.
The victory avenged November's loss to the Broncos, who won the first meeting in overtime after rallying from 11 points down in the final few minutes, and it sent Azusa Pacific into the West Region championship game to take on Pacific West Conference arch-rival California Baptist in the fourth installment of this year's rivalry series.
Senior guard Troy Leaf registered his second straight 30-point game, leading Azusa Pacific with team-highs of 30 points and seven rebounds, and he joined senior point guard Robert Sandoval in passing out nine of the Cougars' 13 assists in the game. The pair combined for five assists on all five of Kevin Stafford's three-pointers which accounted for all of his 15 points, and they helped make sure that a nine-point halftime lead never shrank to less than seven points the rest of the way.
Cal Poly Pomona, the California Collegiate Athletic Association tournament champion and regular-season runner-up, finishes the year with a 24-7 record, while the PacWest regular-season co-champion Azusa Pacific improves to 26-5 heading into Monday's West Region title game. For the first time since 2011, the West Region championship game is an All-PacWest affair, and it's the fifth straight year the West Region title will be decided between teams from the same conference after California Baptist, the tournament's No. 3-seed, needed a buzzer-beating putback to post a 78-77 win over seventh-seeded Seattle Pacific in the evening's first semifinal game.
Stafford drilled a three-pointer on Azusa Pacific's opening possession, and Leaf sank a trio of three-pointers in a stretch lasting less than two minutes to spark an 11-2 run that pushed the Cougars to an early 17-8 lead. Cal Poly Pomona pulled within four after a Ryan Hall trey, but the Broncos managed to hit just one more field goal in the next 7:30 of game time. Sandoval and Stafford each hit three-pointers of their own before Leaf capped a 14-4 run with a two-point jumper from the elbow to push the lead to 31-17 with about five minutes left in the first half.
Leaf scored the Cougars' final four points of the half, helping Azusa Pacific take a 47-38 halftime lead. Cal Poly Pomona twice got within seven points, first when Terrence Drisdom scored two of his game-high 31 points to start the second half and again on a Drisdom three-pointer with 13 minutes to play. Senior forward Christian Katuala answered with back-to-back buckets the first time, pushing the lead back into double figures, and junior guard Bruce English knocked down a corner three-pointer to answer the Drisdom trey.
Drisdom, the California Collegiate Athletic Association Player of the Year, made 13-of-23 shots and finished with game-highs of 31 points and eight rebounds, but he was the Broncos' only starter to score more than six points. Quentin Taylor came off the bench for 14 points and six rebounds.
Leaf's driving layup through two defenders with eight minutes to play finished off another 11-2 run, this time giving the Cougars their largest lead of the game, 64-47, with the first of three times Azusa Pacific led by a 17-point margin. Stafford drilled his fifth three-pointer for a 69-52 lead with 6:09 to play, which the Broncos answered with a 10-2 run to trim the margin to 71-62 with 3:17 left. Cal Poly Pomona didn't score again until the final 30 seconds, and Leaf and Sandoval combined to go six-for-six at the free throw line to finish off the 10-point win.
VIDEO: Azusa Pacific Postgame Press Conference (Semifinals)
