LOS ANGELES — With its collective back against the wall, the Cal State Monterey Bay men's basketball team came up big when it counted, rallying from an early deficit to hold off Cal State L.A. 71-66 Saturday night in The Eagles Nest. The win puts the Otters in seventh place in the CCAA standings with four games remaining. The top six teams will advance to the CCAA Championship Tournament in March.

CSUMB (12-12, 8-10 CCAA) avenged an early season upset by the Golden Eagles (9-13, 7-11) in Seaside and, in the process, knocked L.A. back into ninth place.

"Obviously this was a must-win weekend," said CSUMB Head Coach Rob Bishop, whose team defeated Cal State Dominguez Hills Friday night in overtime. "These probably were our two best team wins of the season. We got great efforts up and down the lineup, and not just from the starters.

"You want to be playing your best basketball down the stretch and I feel like we're starting to play our best ball."

Almost lost in the shuffle of the big team win was junior guard Alex Fertig (Fresno/Buchanan HS), who became just the fifth player in Otter history to go over 1,000 career points (1,009) by scoring a game-high 16 Saturday night.

The Otters never led in the first half, and, for a spell, it looked as if their season might be spiraling away from them. They went nearly seven minutes without scoring, allowing L.A. to embark on a 13-0 run. That turned a 12-12 tie into a 25-12 lead as the Golden Eagles threatened to take the game by the scruff of the neck.

With their season in the balance, however, the Otters responded. Five different players scored in a 14-2 Otter run that brought them to within 27-26 at intermission. The lead changed hands five times in the first nine minutes of the second half until a Daye Turner (Compton/Centennial HS) 3-pointer and a Mateo Jones (Victorville/Silverado HS) layup put the Otters on top to stay at 48-44.

The Otters never expanded their lead to more than nine points down the stretch, but L.A. never possessed the ball within a possession of the lead over the final 11:16 of regulation.

In addition to Fertig, who also led both teams with seven rebounds, CSUMB got 15 points from Evan Zeller (Mission Viejo HS) and 12 points from Greg Anderson (Murietta/Palomar College).

CSUMB returns to The Kelp Bed for its final home games of the 2015 season when its hosts two of the teams directly in front of it in the CCAA standings. Humboldt State visits Friday and Cal State San Bernardino comes to town Saturday. Both games tip at 7:30 p.m.