Mustangs hope to go dancin'

The Mustangs are 40 minutes away from the NCAA Tournament.
The Cal Poly men’s basketball team advanced to Saturday’s Big West Conference Tournament championship with an 81-56 throttling of Cal State Fullerton on Friday at the Anaheim Convention Center.
The second-seeded Mustangs (19-10) face regular-season champion Long Beach State (23-7) at 8 p.m. on Saturday (ESPN2) with the winner earning the league’s automatic bid to next week’s tournament.
Cal Poly, which moved to Division I in 1994-95, has never advanced to the “Big Dance.”
“You can sit there against the wall or you can get out there and dance,” Cal Poly head coach Kevin Bromley. “… These guys are focused. We can’t think about what happens if we do win or don’t win. We have to focus on the task at hand. If we do that we’ll be in good shape.”
After the game, Bromley, and just about everyone else in the building, agreed the key to Saturday’s game is stopping Long Beach State’s guards Big West Player of the Year Aaron Nixon, Kejuan Johnson and Kevin Houston.
“They have to stop Johnson and Nixon of course,” Cal State Fullerton forward Justin Burns said. “… Whoever plays the best defense, that’s what it’s going to come down to.”
The Mustangs did a pretty solid job against one of the Big West’s best guard on Friday, holding Bobby Brown to 11 points on 3-of-15 shooting.
Nixon, however, has been the Big West’s most clutch shooter over the last year. He was 5 of 11 from the floor in Friday’s semifinal win over UC Irvine, finishing with 16 points and four assists.
“We have to do a good job of guarding them off the dribble,” Bromley said.
“Aaron Nixon’s a key. We’re going to put some thought into it tonight. Maybe you let him get his 30 and shut everybody else down. I don’t know.”

Update: Here's ESPN's postgame show looking back at the championship game, which the Mustangs lost.