THE BAD:  The 49ers dropped their third straight game to fall to 4-5 overall with a futile 79-55 loss at Syracuse, shooting 31.5% from the field, getting to the free-throw line only ten times, and being grossly out-rebounded.

THE GOOD:  Long Beach State played an undefeated, highly-ranked East Coast team very hard in the first half; playing far from home in crippling cold in the third of a three-game road swing (the team’s second of the year).  After playing 20 very good minutes against a big, superbly talented team in a raucous arena, how scary does a UCSB road game sound?

The ‘Niners trailed by seven at the half, but just ten minutes later it was clear that this game was a lost cause.  Long Beach State lost cohesion and aggression, settling for jumper after jumper and allowing Orangemen free range to the basket.  Faces cringed as the Beach clanged three after three off the Orange iron.  But I smiled.  I told Mike that I hoped they shot nothing but three pointers the rest of the game – and missed every one.

Not that I wanted them to lose.  I didn’t.  But at this point in the game, victory was unreachable.  So, as a coach, you look for something to take away from this game.  And if I’m coach Dan Monson, I take one look at the box score and notice the 36 three-point attempts (I predicted they’d reach forty, so close!), of which just five were converted.

A 13.6 three-point shooting percentage is a fan’s nightmare and a coach’s dream, because they give fans hope and coaches headaches.  Jacking up threes was obviously not the way to get back into the game, but one after another was launched into the air without discretion.  Coach Monson was visibly unhappy, and after AP reports that he kept the team in the locker room for a half-hour before addressing the media, I’d venture to guess that he let them know how he felt.  You think Long Beach State will shoot 36 three-pointers in their next game?  Yeah right.

The depressing thing about that stat is not even the sheer number of missed three-pointers; it’s the fact that the 49ers relied exclusively on threes when they didn’t need to.  Syracuse plays a famous zone defense that opens up the three-pointer to its opponent, but they barely used it against the 49ers at all.  Long Beach was successful in the first half by attacking the basket, scrambling hard for the basketball and being patient for good looks.  As they began to fall behind after halftime, the 49ers abandoned the things that worked in the first half and started jacking up threes.  

The LAST thing you do against a highly-ranked team is take quick shots, because you give the other team more time with the ball.  A team that relies heavily on four freshmen will learn this.  And this: as long as this team is patient for quality shots and does not fall prey to the allure of the three-point shot, they’ll be fine.

Changing topics, all-everything guard Donovan Morris scored five points and shot 2-15 from the field (0-8 from the arc).  Tragic.  But not the end of the world.  D-Mo scored twenty-plus in five of the previous six games.  Why?  Quality shots.  He didn’t get them against Syracuse.  “I don’t have any excuses,” he told the AP.  

I’ll make them for him.  

Morris’ hot streak had to catch up with him at some point, and the end of a brutal three-game road trip against a top-25 team is as excusable a place as any.  He traditionally starts a little slow and gets hot when the team needs him to.  At Syracuse, he tried to bring them back with threes but just didn’t have it.  

More alarming is Stephan Gilling’s stat line, which consists of 4-14 shooting, and 4-14 three-point shooting.  Fourteen shots.  All of which were three-pointers.  Steph is a supremely talented scorer who can score in a variety of ways – “Batman to Donovan’s Superman,” as Mike says – so after a steady heaping of Monson, it will be interesting to see how Gilling approaches the next few games. Cough – attack the basket – cough!

The good thing about this loss is that there is plenty to take away from it.  The 49ers don’t rebound well, and need to do better at the free-throw stripe.  We already knew these things.  Today, we also learned that they’re prone to jack threes when falling behind.  

Long Beach returns home for two games before hitting the road in a rowdy arena yet again, this time at Oregon.  The blowout loss at Syracuse hurts, but it is only one game in a long season.  The 49ers had a chance to make a splash and did not take advantage, but this season is about bigger goals.

Next Saturday against Montana State, we’ll see what they’ve learned.