Toby Okwuokei drives to the hoop in Saturday's season opener vs. Academy of Art.
Box Score SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — The San Francisco State men's basketball team by as much as 11 points in its season opener but the Gators fell late, 78-68, to Academy of Art on Saturday night inside the Conlan Center.
- Four Gators reached double digits. Toby Okwuokei led SF State with 15 points, a dozen in the first half. John Bakke scored 13 points in his first career start, as did fellow starter Eche Okeke. Transfer Caleb Oden scored 10 points in his first official game in the purple and gold.
- ART U's Klay Brown led all players with 21 points. Latrell Williams and Rodney Munson each added a dozen points, and Williams led all players with a game-high eight rebounds.
- The two teams shot comparably. ART U went 40 percent (28-for-70) from the field while the Gators were 39.7 percent (23-of-58). ART U also shot slightly better from deep at 32 percent (8-for-25) compared to 27.8 percent (5-for-18). The Gators shot 65.4 percent (17-for-26) from the free throw line to ART U's 58.3 percent (14-for-24).
- The Urban Knights also held the rebounding advantage, 47-40.
- SF State's 22 turnovers proved costly, resulting in 23 points for the Urban Knights.
- A final box score was not immediately available after the game.
SF State opened with an Oden three-pointer followed by an Okeke layup that put the Gators up 5-0 in the first minute of play. The Gators took as large as an 11-point lead and led 34-30 at the half. The lead got away late in the second half and the Urban Knights ran away in the final minutes, pushing their lead to double digits.
"It's hard to win when you give up 17 offensive rebounds and turn it over 22 times," said Head Coach
Vince Inglima. "Despite that, we controlled the game for large chunks of time. When it came down to the end we couldn't execute at a high enough level."
The Gators head back to San Rafael on Sunday, November 13 for a 3:30 p.m. tipoff versus Dominican. The Penguins are picked 10th out of 11 teams. The game will be live streamed for $10 by Dominican. Live stats will be available at sfstategators.com with updates also available on Twitter at @sfstate_mbb. Tickets are available here.
