Down 18 points to Cal Poly midway through the second half on Saturday at the Save Mart Center, Fresno State started pressing and trapping and pushing tempo. Off a pair of free throws by Jonathan Wills, the Bulldogs got right into the Mustangs. Kevin Olekaibe immediately came up with a steal and before too long, that Mustangs' lead had been cut to a single digit.

Wills cut to the lane and scored with 6:46 remaining, bringing the Bulldogs to within eight points. But that is as close as they got in a 65-46 loss, Cal Poly pulling away through the final six minutes.

Given the Bulldogs' struggles in the half-court, not just in this game but this season, the question is whether Fresno State needed to be pushing harder sooner.

Cal Poly turned over the ball four times in that stretch, missed a pair of 3-point shots.

''You know what, we really wanted to pressure the entire game and we did for the most part,'' Coach Rodney Terry said. ''We weren't really up trapping initially, but we wanted them to feel us with our full-court pressure whether it was man press or zone press to start the game. We were in pressure up the floor initially, but we weren't full out in terms of trapping.

''We didn't really want to have to do that against this team because this team is, again, a team that understands who they are and they don't really beat themselves. The last thing we really wanted to do to start the game is get up and start trapping and leave some of their wide open shooters. They have one of the top 3-point shooters in the country. We didn't want to have to scramble out of situations early in the game and leave them loose on the perimeter.''