Despite the live band and cheering home crowd, the Pioneer men’s basketball team lost to the UC San Diego Tritons Saturday night for their seventh straight loss.

With the 67-83 loss on Saturday, the Pioneers are now tied in the California Collegiate Athletic Association for last place with a 4-14 record with four games left in the regular season.

Against the Tritons on Saturday, the men’s basketball team seemed to lack rhythm throughout the game and failed to play with enough defensive effort.

“I felt like our effort for 40 minutes was not where it needed to be to play against a team like that that’s on a roll, “ said Head Coach Gus Argenal. “We need to defend better for a long period of time get more stops on the roll and they took advantage of the fact that we weren’t 100% on our game in terms of our game defensively.”

One of the things UC San Diego was able to do well was get to the free-throw line. Of their 30 attempts, the Tritons made 27. The Pioneers made just six.

The Pioneers turned over the ball 15 times, which resulted in 20 points for the Tritons, and helped them dominate the game.

“They were able to control the game,” said Argenal. “They wanted it the entire night… they played at the pace they wanted to. It was because we couldn’t get stops, we couldn’t get the game going at a faster pace, we need to be more uptempo.”

In contrast, the Pioneers scored 32 points off the bench led by freshman guard Aaron Cameron. He led the team in scoring with 14 points and shot 4-8 from the three-point line.

“The biggest thing that stuck out to me tonight is our freshman Aaron Cameron.” said Argenal. “Our freshman really came in, did a great job and had 14 points for us.”

Cameron, coming off his best game of the season, thinks his team should motivate each other and avoid coming out flat going into the final games of the season.

“We can’t come out flat,” said Cameron. “We’ve got to motivate each other and play to our full potential.”

With Argenal’s inaugural season coming to a close the Pioneers will look to finish strong in the final four games. They have two games at home against Cal State Stanislaus and Chico State. They will finish the season on the road for their final two games as they still look for their first win on the road against San Francisco State and Sonoma State.