SoCalHoops College News

Better Late Than Never: USC Beats
Up On Long Beach St.--(Nov. 27, 1998)

This game took place on Tuesday night, and it's now Friday, so it may seem like old news, but hey, it's a story that deserves to be told.   And we're sure that some of our readers who are USC fans will enjoy it since the Trojans don't play again until this Monday, when they'll take on St. Bonaventure in an early game at 5:00 p.m.  at the Sports Arena.

Bibby was not pleased with the first half effort

Brandon Granville brings the ball upcourt

Greg Lakey was the rebounding star of the second half

Jeff Trepagnier excited the crowd with his dunking

USC with the win over Long Beach on Tuesday night is off to its first 3-0 start in 10 years since 1988-89 when the Trojans went   4-0 before losing.  USC was 2-0 going in, and they were pretty self-satisfied, at least according to Henry Bibby, with their win over UNLV, and it showed, as they couldn't quite shake the 49'ers through the first half and the early part of the second half before pulling away to win 74-48. Bibby told us in the locker room, "We started out sluggish, and I'm not surprised because the two practices we had after the UNLV win were the same way, they were not good practices," Bibby said.  "We came off a big win at UNLV, but the guys can't rest on their achievement, and they need to get back in synch. The practices had been bad for the last two days, and I was expecting a difficult game because Wayne Morgan is a good coach and he's got very good athletes at Long Beach State."

And if the win was ultimately satisfying for the Trojans, it was almost humiliating for Morgan, who's Long Beach State team suffered it's second-worst loss ever under Morgan's coaching, and it was the single worst defeat since the 49'ers lost to Kansas last year on November 22, 1997.

The Trojans started Grnavill, Ayuso, Trepagnier, Turner and Scalabrine, while Long Beach started Lee, Davis, Bryant, Smalls and Milisa.  We had just seen Long Beach struggle against Pepperdine, and with what we'd seen of the Trojans we were expecting a quick start and an easy put-away, but we were pretty surprised with the shooting of the Beach, as Milisa hit for the first points in the post.  Turner followed with a short turn-around hook, a very pretty shot to tie the game at 2. Throughout the first half, the lead see-sawed back and forth with USC trailing about halfway through by 1 or 2 points.  Granville seemed to be having a little difficulty with Long Beach, and USC never was really able to completely penetrate the zone that Morgan was throwing at USC.

USC can be a good perimeter shooting team, but never really adjusted to the zone until Bibby subbed Granville for Augustine with 7:17 remaining in the first half and USC down by two.  In the span of four minutes, Augustine came in and calmed things down and when Granville returned with 52 seconds to play in the first half, USC was up by four. Before the half could end, Ron Johnson, the freshman from Helix High who ran the point for Long Beach about half the game, went to the line and made one of two, cutting the lead to three. With only 10 seconds remaining Adam Spanich, who had been in the game for aboutg 2 minutes, hit a three from the top right hand side of the arc, to give USC a 6 point lead at the half, 22-27.  We asked Bibby about whether he tried to adjust to the zone at all and he said, "We didn't really make any adjustments, but we became more patient, looking to penetrate the gaps.  We don't want to be a perimeter team, and I feel we have to get points inside, and that's what we tried to do with their zone.  Most of our points again were created by our defense, off the transition, and that's how we're going to score a lot this year," Bibby said.

And if USC didn't adjust much for the zone, in the second half Long Beach did, pretty much abandoning the plan, and things went from bad to worse, as USC quickly extened it's lead to 14 points, running off 8 straight in the span of less than three minutes.  Long Beach scored once, with 17:02 to play and then USC again extended the lead to 16 on goaltending call against Milisa on a shot by Scalabrine. With about 4:28 to play, Jeff Trepagnier did what he does best, hit a big flying one handed dunk off an assist by Granville which sent the crowd wild and exteneded the lead to 17 points.  From there it was pretty much garbage time as ultimately USC blew Long Beach away on another Trepagnier slam dunk, a 16' jumper from Scalabrine at the top of the key, a layup by Lakey, and a Clancy put back off a miss by Scalabrine, and some free throws, and SC finished the game to win by 26 points.

And if Bibby is right about defense, being the key, then USC did what it was supposed to do, scoring 41 points but holding Long Beach to only 21 points, scoreless for the last 4:25 of the game.  Bibby told the assembled media in the locker room after the game, "Our defense didn't do anything in the first half, but we turned it up in the second half.  I got on Jeff Trepagnier at halftime and he turned the defense on in the second half.  And Lakey controlled the boards in the second half.  You can't go through the motions," Bibby said.  "You have to come ready to play. We have to play better than our competition."  And the total of 48 points allowed were actually the fewest points scored by any USC opponent since UC Irvine was held to 45 points in 97-98.

Several Trojan players were key to this win, and you can pretty much guess who they were: Brian Scalabrine, Jeff Trepagnier on offense, and Greg Lakey and Sam Clancy on defense.  Scalabrine is the most exuberant player on the floor we've seen in a long time, and even though he sort of wears a permanent "serious look" scowl on the floor, you can also see that he's having a great deal of fun doing what he's doing. "I owe everything to coach Bibby," he said in the locker room. "I came in here expecting to be a bench player, and it turns out that I get to make major contributions.  That's just a great feeling."  We examined the stats with him while he sat in his locker area, and he was not at all satisfied with his performance. "I like the 9 for 14 shooting from the field, but 1 for 2 on free throws is not very good, and my rebounding will need to improve, since I only had 4, and only 1 offensive board," he said. "But Greg did a great job rebounding.  Look at that," he said pointing to the stat sheet.  "Man, 9 rebounds is great, 3 offensive and 5 defensive. I need to be doing that too."

Bibby was not down on Scalabrine at all though, and even if the big redhead wasn't completely happy with his own performance, there really wasn't much to complain about from a guy who scored a point every two minutes he was on the floor: 19 points in 38 minutes. Bibby said of him "He was one of the top 3 players during preseason, and according to our rating system, he's the top player we've got. He hustles, brings the ball down the floor, can shoot from inside or outside and he just does so many things that you just can't teach. He's a natural, and he has a real passion for the game."

Trepagnier brought his pure athleticism to the game, defending well, and shooting 4 for 7 from the field and 4 for 5 from the line to finishe with 12 points, 3 blocked shots and two steals in 26 minutes of play.  Jarvis Turner started, but never really did much spectacular, finishing with 8 points on 3 for 9 shooting from the line, and 2-2 from the line. He did play good defensively in the second half,  getting two steals in 14 minutes of play.

Brandon Granville was not nearly as effective as he was in the first three outings, but he still did reasonably well, finishing with 7 assists, 7 points and only a single turnover, and he got 6 steals.  While he seemed to struggle early on, he really calmed down and capably led the attack in the second half picking up 5 of his steals and 5 assists in the second half.  Brandon played most of the game, 34 minutes, and Kevin Augustine played the other 6, getting 3 assists but going 0 for 2 from the field and picking up one foul. Still, he brought a certain maturity and calmed the team down when things seemed to be getting away from the Trojans in the first half.  "We'd like to see Augustine back, and we really need him for this team to succeed," coach Bibby said after the game. "He's a big plus and he really got our offense back on track when he came in."

Adam Spanich never really got going, and other than the single three pointer with 10 seconds before the half, there was not much else he did except hit two from the line (2 for 2).  Oh, he committed 3 turnovers and in general was not really effective. Lakey on the other hand really stepped it up in the second half, and did exactly what the coaches wanted him to do, which was rebound. He also managed to score 9 points in 16 minutes, going 5 for 5 from the line and 2 for 5 from the field.  Sam Clancy only played 12 minutes, which was 10 more than David Bluthenthal, who finally got into the game with about 2 minutes remaining.  Clancy picked up four points but also grabbed 6 boards and had two blocked shots.   And finally, Elias Ayuso seemed to just be Bibby's whipping boy during the game, with Henry yelling at him to get in position, to get back on his man, and so on, and Ayuso seemed to be a bit frustrated with just about every aspect of his game, shooting only 2 for 7 from the field, 0 for 4 from three point range and committing one turnover. He did get 4 points and one assist in 23 minutes of play, but if this keeps up, you'll see him sitting more in favor of Spanich, Turner or Wilder.

Overall, USC shot .468 from the field on 29 for 62 shooting, not bad but not outstanding either, but the free-throw shooting was much improved again, as the team shot .875 from the line going 6 for 8 in the first half and a perfect 8-8 in the second half. And USC's rebounding was probably a big factor in the win as they led 41-35 in that category.

For Long Beach State, nothing seemed to be going right.  In the first half they only shot 11-32 and in the second half shot only 10-28. The team committed 21 turnovers and only .286 from the free-throw line.  The high scorer for Long Beach was Ramel "Rock" Lloyd who finished with a pretty respectable game, shooting 8 for 19 from the field for 16 points, but he did also commit 7 of those 21 turnovers. We spoke with him in the 49'er locker room and he was just dejected. "I haven't had a single good game here.  This is very frustrating. We really need to do something to get some wins."

D'Cean Bryant had 10 points and was the only other Long Beach player besides Lloyd in double figures.  Defensively, Richie Smalls, the goat of the game against Pepperdine last Saturday, managed to get 9 boards (8 of them defensive), and generally he seemed to play well, scoring 7 points.  But those were the highlights.

At the point, Long Beach for the first time used Ron Johnson for an extended period, and he played 16 minutes, getting two assists, 2 ponts and only committing one turnover while grabbing 2 steals in 16 minutes.  He seemed a bit nervous at first, but then warmed up to the task of distributing the ball, and he actually did a pretty good job, and exhibited what we thought was better control over the game situation than did starter Tommie Davis, who committed 5 turnovers and only had 1 assist in 24 minutes of game time.  Sure Johnson doesn't have the same handle that Davis does, but he just seemed to lead the team a bit better than Smith did on Tuesday.  Of course, we're not sure where he led them, because neither of these guys can really penetrate, and their shooting is pretty bad from the perimeter.  If Wayne Morgan can survive this year though, he'll have a great point in James Wright (6'-0" Sr. PG) from Manual Arts, who is quicker and a better shooter than either the senior or the freshman Morgan now has to choose between.

All in all, this was a pretty fun game, and the Trojans probably learned a few things about the continued level of intensity they'll need to maintain as they pull into the Pac-10 season.  And Long Beach probably learned a few things too.  Like what it feels like to be 1-3.  But that will probably change to 2-3 as CSULB will take on San Diego State on Saturday the 28th (tomorrow) at 1:00 p.m. at Cox Arena in San Diego.   So if you're done doing holiday shopping, you might want to make it over to Cox to check out which one of these teams will win.   We still haven't heard about whether David Abramowitz will be healthy to play.

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