Road wins keep coming for the SMU men's basketball team, although it wasn't easy on Wednesday night at California.

The Mustangs committed a season-high 25 fouls, had two players foul out, another finish with four fouls and gave up 18 turnovers, two short of their season high. They also had a 16-point, second-half lead disappear, but pulled out the 81-77 victory.

"It was a battle on the road," SMU head coach Andy Enfield said. "Road games are hard no matter where you play. Cal played very hard in the second half and it was a battle to the end. We'll get out of here with a big road win and regroup."

SMU got off to a hot start offensively, making its first five 3-point attempts. The fifth was followed by a Keon Ambrose-Hylton basket to cap a 7-0 run and put the Mustangs up by 16 points just over seven minutes into the game.

Three of those five 3-pointers were courtesy of Chuck Harris who got into an early rhythm. Harris had 13 points by halftime and finished with a game-high 21 points, all while battling foul trouble. 

"Chuck played a very good game," Enfield said. "We had foul trouble, two guys fouled out and Chuck had four (fouls). They shot 32 free throws. I think at one point, at halftime, we had shot no free throws and they had 15 or 20. We've just got to do a better job, I guess, of drawing fouls."

SMU was called for 10 fouls in the first half and 15 in the second half. Meanwhile, Cal was only whistled six times in the first half and had its second-half foul numbers go up late when sending the Mustangs to the free throw line.

The charity stripe was good to the Bears, who were 8-of-14 from the line in the first half while SMU did not attempt a single free throw. Cal went 14-of-18 on free throws in the second half to finish 22-of-32 for the game.

Those free throws helped the Bears get back into the game. When it went from a seven-point SMU lead down to two with 7:34 left, three of those five points came from the line. And again, when Cal tied the game, it came on four-straight free throws.

"I thought we gave great effort (on defense) to hold them to 39%," Enfield said. "We fouled a little too much. It seemed like the second half, they shot 32 free throws, they were on the foul line every possession, especially as they came back. It's hard to get in any kind of rhythm when you're fouling so much. I thought we got fouled some too, but in the first half we didn't shoot a single free throw and they had (14) free throws to our zero."

Samet Yiğitoğlu provided the answer, scoring five-straight points of his own to start a 9-0 run that would give SMU the lead back for good. Yiğitoğlu finished with 11 points and seven rebounds before fouling out with 43 seconds left. Jerrell Colbert was the other Mustang to foul out, doing so with 5:33 to play. 

"This was a tough game for us, we knew it would be tough," Enfield said. "Give Cal credit, they played very well in the second half."

Harris and B.J. Edwards continued to pick up much of the slack without starting point guard Boopie Miller for a fourth straight game. The Mustangs also got good minutes from AJ George and Tibet Görener, but Edwards still played 39 of the 40 minutes.

"It's really hard without Boopie, especially with Chuck getting four fouls. I thought AJ and Tibet did a good job off the bench," Enfield said. "Tibet hit that big 3 in the first half. It's hard on BJ because he has to play a lot of minutes. He played great (Wednesday), 18 points, five assists, had that big steal, three steals and made some free throws down the stretch."

Meanwhile, Kario Oquendo had one of his better overall games. He finished with 10 points on an efficient 3-of-5 from the floor while going 4-of-5 from the free throw line. Oquendo led the team with eight rebounds to go with two assists and a blocked shot.

"(Oquendo) had eight rebounds. He got that huge offensive rebound and got the and-one," Enfield said. "He had seven defensive rebounds and led us in rebounding (Wednesday). Very impressive."

Without Miller, the Mustangs have had their turnovers increase in each of the four games, too. Going from 10 to 13 to 16 and then 18 on Wednesday. Cal would turn those 18 turnovers into 25 points, but SMU played good enough defense overall to hold on for the win.

SMU's win along with Wake Forest falling to Virginia gives sole possession of fourth place to the Mustangs entering the final stretch. But they have another big road challenge Saturday when they go to Stanford for a 4 p.m. CT contest.

"Our guys are 21-7 right now. We're in fourth place in the ACC and we have a lot to play for here the last three games," Enfield said. "They play tough, they play hard, our effort's been great. Without the turnovers, we probably win this by 10, but we are a veteran team, they're very mature, they don't get really rattled, occasionally. They have really come together and improved dramatically from the beginning of the season."