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Santa Clara looked headed for victory Saturday night despite a less than efficient scoring performance from Kevin Foster. But Kyle Boswell spoiled all that, with a 3-pointer to help UCSB reach overtime against the Broncos.
Boswell's heroics didn't help him score very highly on our Game Score scale though. He logged just a 9.4, but he was still the third most important player for the Gauchos in their 83-80 overtime win.
This was really about the two stars of the game, more than just the role players (although this shows that everyone has their moment).
Let's start with Foster who scored 28 points, but was just 9-for-23 from the floor. That included a 4-for-13 performance from 3-point range. He made matters worse by going just 6-for-11 from the free throw line.
The senior still had a nice game on the assist side with nine, but had just one steal. That is an odd departure from his performance so far this season that saw him perform fairly well on the defensive end.
All told, he still logged a 41.9 Game Score, mainly on the strength of his assists and plain scoring. The efficiency hurt, although losing probably hurt worse.
And losing was probably due to the effort of UCSB's Alan Williams, who has logged one of the top Game Scores we have seen this season. Williams played 39 minutes despite fouling out, and had 29 points and 17 rebounds in the win. That ignores his two blocks and two steals.
In short, Williams was on fire, and probably got Ken Pomeroy (who has a whole section in his weekly recaps dedicated to the sophomore) a little giddy.
Williams had a 58.7 Game Score that is the best we have seen. It is not hard to see why, because we haven't had a performance that had such a great shooting night and the rebounding and defense to go with it.
Isaiah Canaan was the gold standard prior to this. I would be amazed if we see too many more performances like this the rest of the way, even with so much of the season left to go.