jason day long beach

SoCalHoops College News

Jason Day: Another Pepperdine vs.
LBSU Report & Some More Pics--(Nov. 22, 1998)

Jason and his buddy Larry Gray were over at the Pyramid Last night and Larry brought his new photography equipment with him to try out on the game. Even though we've already loaded up a ton of stuff on this game, his photos are certainly worth a look. He took his with traditional, high speed big-time camera stuff, real film and telephoto lenses; our stuff on the other hand was taken using a Sony Mavica 700 digital camera. The advantage to ours is speed of loading; Larry's stuff is certainly higher definition. Jason also did a small game report. Of course as the high school and college season unfolds, we'll be covering different events. For now, here's Jason's report and if you want to see more Larry's photos besides the two below, they are certainly worth a look. Just click on the link to them.

Pepperdine beats Long Beach State 52-48

by Jason Day
photos by Larry Gray

Pepperdine's men's basketball team took their 3-0 record into the Pyramid at Cal State Long Beach last night and just barely escaped the upset. It wasn't a particularly pretty game, lots of turnovers and missed easy baskets, but it was pretty entertaining overall despite the low score.

I wanted to cover this one from a photographic point of view rather than reporting on the details, but I did "jot" down a couple of mental notes.

Antrone Lee with the jumper.

If Long Beach had made more of their layups they would have won this one by double digits. They enjoyed on overall height advantage but the big guys missed some easy ones, and the offense really didn't seem to go through the big guys very much anyway. I thought Milisa and Smalls could have been even bigger factors if they had touched the ball in the blocks a little more. Smalls is a fun player to watch, athletic, aggressive, and a real banger inside. Milisa worked hard in the paint and also showed a decent shot including a 3 pointer. Tommie Davis is another one of those super quick guards who's a lot of fun to watch. But I do think he's got to be much more of a factor offensively than he was tonight. (0 pts. he only shot the ball twice, 3 assists and 2 steals in 30 minutes.) Antrone Lee took up some of the backcourt scoring slack and showed that he can penetrate, pull up for the jumper, or pass the ball. Ramel Lloyd who looks more like a running back than a guard is especially quick off the dribble but kept throwing up these "playground" underhanders when he got to the rack. None of those "prayers" were answered and it hurt the offense. After shooting .519 in the 1st half, this team went stone cold in the 2nd and shot .222 (6-27)...that obviously won't get it done.

For Pepperdine, who shot poorly for the whole game (.375 1st half; .444 2nd) they were lucky to be down by only 6 (31-25) at the half. They had committed 13 turnovers to add to the 1st half shooting problems. Nick Sheppard had a great night from the floor and on the boards, but also had 5 of those turnovers. Jelani Gardner played big, and did a great job of controlling the rock and distributing it. He had a poor shooting night but did have 5 assists and 6 steals. Tommie Prince had a good shooting night, 4 of 5 including 2-2 from the arc, to finish with 10 points.

Tommie Prince vs. Ramel Lloyd

A tough full court press by Long Beach State in the closing minute of the game nearly gave them the win. In fact, after Gardner was tied up and the ball awarded to the 49ers based on the new "defense tie up" rule, they could have tied it but Smalls ( I believe it was he) blew a layup that would have tied it with only a few seconds left.