LONG BEACH, CA – The Long Beach State basketball program did some impressive things during Dan Monson’s first four seasons as the 49ers’ head coach.
*After inheriting a program that was soon to be slapped with NCAA probation and had lost every key player from the 49ers’ final season under Larry Reynolds, Monson’s clubs’ wins totals have gone from six to 15 to 17 to 22.
*The 49ers have advanced to two consecutive Big West Conference Tournament championship games, rolling to the regular-season title last season with a 14-2 record.
*Four seniors, Casper Ware, Larry Anderson, T.J. Robinson and Eugene Phelps, have earned all-conference honors.
*Ware, the first-ever BWC hoopster selected both Player of the Year AND Defensive Player of the Year last March, is also the first-ever 49er selected to the John R. Wooden Award preseason Top 50.
*The 49ers are playing at the University of Pittsburgh (No. 8 in the BurlisonOnBasketball.com Top 16) in a nationally televised game Wednesday night, just another of the contests they have played against national powers under Monson. Later there will be games at San Diego State, Louisville, Kansas and North Carolina, as well one against Xavier three days before Christmas in Hawaii.
That’s all fine and dandy and no one would suggest that the program is anything but brisk and growing under Monson.
That conceded, anything short of a win in the March 10 BWC Tournament title game in the Honda Center in Anaheim – with the slot in the 2012 NCAA Tournament that will go along with it – will be looked upon by everyone concerned as a harsh disappointment.
It’s the nature of college basketball – especially on the “mid-major” level.
Success is all about getting into the “tournament”. And I’m not referring to those of the “NIT” or “The College Basketball Invitational” or “CollegeInsider.com Tournament”.
And Monson and everyone who follows the program that is also hip enough to the way of the world realizes that the only way – short of an unlikely at-large bid which would only come with a 20-plus victory season that included several wins over some of those high-profile foes – into the REAL tournament is via a March 10 win in Anaheim.
“That’s what you’re measured by,” Monson said a few days before his team’s Saturday afternoon opener against the University of Idaho Vandals.
The UC Santa Barbara Gauchos knocked off the 49ers in each of those past two Big West finals (by margins of five and eight points).
Those were the same UCSB teams the 49ers beat three times in four regular-season meetings (by an average margin of 18 points) and lost just once, by a deuce.
But – for all concerned – the games mean so much more in March than they do in the previous three-plus months of a season.
So that’s why Monson wants his team’s focus – even with all of those opportunities for national attention-grabbing victories over the next month and a half – being on evolving into the most efficient unit it can be when those three days in Anaheim are on tap.
“We’ve been playing (during practice) as well as we did at anytime last season (during the 11-game winning streak that was snapped with loss to the Gauchos,” Monson said.
“But we’re smart enough to know it will not mean a thing if we don’t continue to work hard to get better and be as good as we can be (in March).”
Saturday’s game against the Vandals, in front of a near-capacity (4,000-plus) crowd in the on-campus Walter Pyramid on a gray and moist Southern California day, was a nice opportunity to start the 49ers on that path.
The Vandals were 18-14 in their third season under former Utah State assistant Don Verlin.
For the most part, they ran their half-court offense with patience and precision Saturday afternoon while zoning the 49ers, defensively, in an effort to cut down on the dribble penetration of the likes of Ware and Anderson.
After trailing by two points at intermission, the 49ers – after consecutive 3s by Anderson – took an eight-point advantage 5 ½ minutes into the second half.
But a 3-pointer from Stephen Madison – a teammate of Kentucky All-American candidate Terrence Jones on a Portland travel team a few years ago – put the Vandals back up by a point with eight minutes to go.
Ultimately, with Ware scoring nine points in a four-minute spurt, the 49ers pulled away for a 69-61 victory that seemingly left the crowd mildly deflated.
There was no such feeling from the perspective of Monson or his players, though.
Ware (20 and four) and Anderson (16 and seven) combined for 36 points and 11 assists, while Phelps (11 and six) and Robinson (10 and 11) tag-teamed for 21 points and 17 rebounds.
Just as critical to the team’s success, though, were the 25 minutes provided by point guard Michael Caffey, who is just five months removed from his June graduation at Centennial High in Corona.
“I’m very pleased,” Monson said afterward of the Vandals, members of the Western Athletic Conference.
“That was a ‘league-caliber’-game for us. I think they could end up being a top-three, top-four in our conference (the Big West). They play a style (defensively and offensively) that is extremely difficult for us.”
Going forward – with games at Pittsburgh and San Diego (next Saturday) on tap – it was exactly the kind of test he wanted his team to get.
The 49ers may not have “aced” it but, with two players (Caffey and Ventura College transfer James Ennis, who started and played 24 minutes) playing significant roles in their major college debuts, it was a solid “B”.
“But we know we’re going to have to play a whole lot better (against Jamie Dixon’s Pittsburgh team), just to stay in there (and be competitive, much less to pull off the upset),” Monson said.
Of course, most definitive test for the 49ers will come in Orange County, 2 ½ months into 2012.
And they’d got enough time to bone up and make sure the third time is the charm.
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