long beach loses to pepperdine

SoCalHoops College News

Pepperdine Beats Long Beach State. . .
But Just Barely--(Nov. 22, 1998)

Last night we drove over to Long Beach State to watch the Waves of Pepperdine take on the Long Beach State 49'ers. Pepperdine won it, 52-48, but just barely, and it was a lot closer for the last few minutes of the game than the final 6 point margin might hint at. Pepperdine fell behind by as many as 12 in the first half, but managed to catch up in the second half with a 13-2 run. With only 30 seconds on the clock remaining, it looked like Pepperdine would secure the win without much trouble, as Jelani Gardner ran around Tommie Davis, who was playing with 4 fouls, and decided that rather than foul him, he'd go for the ball. The result was that Long Beach let valuable seconds slip away. Eventually though, Long Beach got the ball back with about 15 seconds, and the score 50-46. Antrone Lee's driving layup with 12.4 seconds remaining got the 49ers to within two, 50-48.

Then on the inbounds play, the unthinkable happend for the Waves, and Romar nearly blew a gasket. Lee tied up Pepperdine's Jelani Gardner with nine seconds left, and the 49ers got the ball on the alternating possession rule, the same rule that last year was not in effect and probably cost Stanford a national title. But this was a game no one seemed to want to win, and Long Beach State, with the chance either win the game with a three pointer or tie it up with a layup, was able to do neither as Richie Smalls (6'-8" Jr. F) who had shot 5 for 14 up until then from the field, missed a four foot pull-up jumper with only 1.4 seconds on the clock. Long Beach was then forced to quickly foul Pepperdine's Kelvin Gibbs, who went to the other end of the floor, and calmly sank two free throws to put the game out of reach. Long Beach got the ball back with less than one second remaining, and once again, it was too little too late.

Had the 49ers shot better from the field in the second half, or made a few more free throws Pepperdine might be undefeated still. Pepperdine shot 40% from the field for the game, a not-so-impressive .375 in the first half (12-32) and .444 (8-18) in the second, and they were absolutely miserable in the first half in three point shooting, hitting only 1 of 9, made by Gibbs. And here's an amazing statistic, especially if you're a Long Beach fan: Pepperdine never went to the line in the first half. Hmmm. Maybe someone should play a bit more defense, or maybe they just managed to play perfect defense and didn't get a foul call, which led to Long Beach leading the game at the half, 31-25.

In contrast, Long Beach, which seemed to at least have portions of the game under control in the first half, just fell apart in the second half. They went from shooting .519 as a team on 14-27 from the field to only 6 for 27 in the second half, including that missed shot with 1.4 seconds remaining, and as a team they only shot .222 in the second half, and .370 for the game overall.

For Long Beach Antrone Lee (6'-7" Jr. F) played pretty well, getting a team high 13 points, followed by Smalls who had 12, and Mate Milisa (6'-11" Jr. C) who finished with 11 points and 11 rebounds (8 defensive). Smalls had 8 rebounds and Ramel "Rock" Lloyd finished with 8 points and 3 boards. Tommie Davis played 30 minutes of the game but didn't score at all and fouled out, and why Morgan kept him in so long is really a mystery because he didn't do anything else especially noteworthy either, getting only 2 defensive rebounds, no assists, no blocks and no steals. Sure, a point guard, especially a 5'-9" one, might not be able to score as easily as, say, a 6'-4" point guard, but when the only thing that he did really well last night was not pick up his dribble and didn't commit a single turnover, if you're Wayne Morgan and 1-1 coming into this game and you're down for most of the second half, then you better think about putting in another guard. . . like maybe Allan Gomez (6'-5" Jr. PG/SG) who transferred from East LA City College but who didn't play at all, or maybe James Delone (6'-2" So. G) who also didn't play, or maybe even highly-touted but under-recruited Ron Johnson (6'-1" Fr. PG) from Helix High in San Diego, who only played one minute of the game. We're all for sticking with what works, and Smith is a pretty good point guard, don't misinterpret what we're saying here, but against a team that is zoning like nobody's business as Pepperdine did, you're going to either have to shoot over the zone, or be able to penetrate it, and Smith just wasn't doing either. Others who played were Braynt D'Cean (6'-6" Sr. F) from Lynwoodk, who only managed one point from the line, shooting 0-3 from thei field and only getting one rebound and a steal. He had one assist and one turnover, so he was even for the night. Lee and Milisa were the best shooters, personally shooting 50% each from the field.

If Pepperdine never took a free-throw during the first half, it was their good shooting from the line which ultimately made the difference, as they shot .667 (8 for 12) in the second half, compared to .500 overall for the 49'ers. Jelani Garder was his usual capable self, and played very well, getting the ball to the open man, displaying great athleticsm, and in general overwhelming Tommie Davis on defense. Jelani finished with 7 points overall, only 3 for 10 from the field, and 1 for 4 from three point range. He did manage 4 rebounds and had 5 assists, but the performance was marred by 4 turnovers. Defensively he managed 6 steals, half of them from Davis. Tommie Prince, Tayshaun's brother, shot a very respectable 4 for 5 from the field and was perfect from three point range, but went 0 for 2 from the line. He picked up 2 boards and 10 points overall, which 2 assists, 2 turnovers and 2 blocked shots, and 3 steals in 31 minutes and he's a big part of the Pepperdine offense and defense. He almost got called for a technical towards the end of the game when he turned the ball over, but all things considered it worked out.

Nick Sheppard shot 5 for 6 from the field, got 10 points total but committed 5 turnovers and eventually was the only Wave to foul out. Shepard (6'-11" Jr. C) played well in the post, working Milisa out of the paint when he thought about it, but neither of these guys was really physical, and Shepard only got 7 boards and no blocks. We generally like his play, but he'll need to get a lot more aggressive if Pepperdine hopes to avoid stumbling like they almost did last night. David Lalazarian (6'-7" So. F) from Tustin, a transfer from Notre Dame this year, played well, getting 7 points on 3 for 8 shooting, but also had 3 turnovers, a key, as both teams committed about the same number, Pepperdine with 20 and Long Beach State with 21. Lalazarian played for 33 minutes and he'll have to step up his production as will Marc McDowell (6'-7" Sr. F) who played for 20 minutes but managed only 4 points and only 1 blocked shot. McDowell got injured early in the second half, but came back late in the game and played pretty good defense.

One thing we've got to say is that the Pyramid is a great venue to watch college hoops. It's well lit, clean, comfortable, and there isn't a bad viewing angle in the whole place. 2,736 showed up for the game (according to the official attendance), but it seemed to be as full as Pauley Pavilion was last Thursday (even though there were 8,532 for the UCLA game. What's shocking though is that there were the same number at the Sports Arena for the USC game, and it seemed almost empty. . . But that's a whole different story.

After the game, coach Morgan told the media, "This was the toughest game we've had so far," and we think he meant it, and of course, the local paper, the Long Beach Press Telegram gave the game a sort of rosy review, saying that the 49'er's are "improving." Sort of and after losing as badly as they did to CSUN, and then winning against LMU on Thursday 98-92 in overtime, it might be said that a close game against the team picked to finish first in the WCC by most pre-season polls is an 'improvement'. But Long Beach has some very tough games coming up, including one this Tuesday night at the Sports Arena (at 7:30 p.m.) against the really improved Trojans, who are fresh off the win over UNLV. For Pepperdine, coach Romar said, "We made some big plays down the stretch". That's a bit of an understatement, considering that Garnder's turnover almost cost them the game. But Romar credited Tommie Prince who he said "is one of the best defenders in the country," and while this statement is just a huge hyperbole, there were more than a few people last night who thought he played very well.

On the "social-scene" front at the game, there were lots of local basketball folks in attendance, including Rod Palmer (Compton Coach), Russell Otis (Tommie and Tayshaun Prince's coach at Dominguez) Dinos Trigonis, Etop Udo-Ema, Larry Grey of USA, and even our own Jason Day who will also be uploading some pictures over at the USA website shortly. Oh, and we also got a chance to talk for a while with Herb Livesay, who was at the game with his wife, of Snow Valley Basketball Camp. As we reported last week, Herb is now scouting for the Portland Trailblazer's organization, and he was checking out some of the local senior talent on both teams, including Prince, Gardner, Bryant and Davis, and we're betting that of those four, at least two are NBA prospects, and we'll bet you can guess which ones.

Long Beach should be able to pick up a few more wins soon, as they play San Diego State on November 28 at San Diego's Cox Arena, and then they play D-II Cal State Dominguez Hills on December 1, right before their biggest test of the year (unless USC turns out to be their biggest test) against Utah on the 5th at the Pyramid.

For Pepperdine, they've got a couple of tune-ups, scheduling Witchita State on November 24 at home, and then traveling to Fullerton to play the Titans on the 28th of November, before matching up against Kansas on December 5 at the John R. Wooden Classic at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim.

We'll be at some of those games and the ones we can't attend, we'll have reports on from correspondents. See you there.