SAN MARCOS —Palomar College buried Imperial Valley College with a barrage of 3-pointers Wednesday, winning 97-78 in a Pacific Coast Athletic Conference men’s basketball game on the Comets’ court.
Palomar (18-9, 8-2 PCAC) set up its 17-of-36 (47.2 percent) shooting on 3-pointers with a 53-30 rebounding advantage. The Comets came out of the gate fast, jumping out to a 32-15 lead en route to 54-33 at halftime.
Imperial Valley (10-15, 4-6 PCAC) played for pride in the second half, out-scoring Palomar 45-43. But it didn’t help remove the pain of a 19-point defeat.
“It’s a man’s game and we played like little boys,” Geric Leath said. “We weren’t rebounding and it killed us.”
Palomar had more to play for than the Arabs. The Comets are tied with Grossmont for the conference lead with two games to play. They also lost to the Arabs 99-96 in overtime in their conference opener at IVC on Jan. 9.
“They (Palomar) came out ready to play,” IVC coach Tyson Aye said. “They knew we beat them the first time and they are contending for the conference title and they came out and played harder than we did and jumped out to a big lead in the first half.
“They were getting a lot of open three pointers on offensive rebounds and kicking it back out and in transition. We did a better job of getting back (defensively) in the second half .We came out and put our heads down and competed in the second half.”
The Arabs opened the second half with a 12-3 run to cut Palomar’s lead to 57-45 with 15 minutes to play. But IVC couldn’t sustain that level of play and fell behind 70-48 in the next three minutes.
Leath, a 6-foot-6 forward from Tampa, Fla., led the Arabs with 15 points. Point guard Darius Nesmith scored 14 and former Calipatria star Miles Hamilton had his third straight game in double figures with 13 points for IVC.
IVC struggled from the field again, making 26-of-62 (41.9 percent) field goals including 10-of-27 3-pointers. The Arabs were an outstanding 16-of-17 from the free throw line. Palomar was 31-of-70 (44.3 percent) from the field and 18-of-29 (62.1 percent) from the foul line.
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