Finals week is coming up for students at Long Beach State this week—after they get through that rough stretch, most kids will take a little time off, relax, and enjoy themselves. After a tough road stretch of seven games over the last month (including Notre Dame, West Virginia, Clemson, and Texas), that’s exactly what the 49ers’ men’s basketball team did, in a fun home blowout of CSU Monterey Bay, 96-61, that featured a career performance from Steph Gilling, and dunks from Eugene Phelps, T.J. Robinson, Greg Plater, Mike Vantrimpont, and yes, even Casper Ware. Don’t worry, we’ll get there.
It was a game that highlighted the strange position the 49ers find themselves in at this stage in the season—they aren’t yet good enough to hang with the big teams (twenty-point losses to Notre Dame and West Virginia, and a thirty-point loss to Texas), but they’re so much better than the competition they can entice to come to the Pyramid that coach Dan Monson admitted, “I told the guys I wasn’t even going to evaluate our offense in this game.” From a coach’s perspective, the game was to test the defensive intensity (which yielded mixed results), and get a feel-good win at home under the team’s belts before they head back into the thick of their grueling non-conference schedule.
It’s probably a good thing Monson (and his team) aren’t going to put much stock in the offensive performance—chances are they won’t throw up 24 points in the first five minutes at Cameron. The team was aided by two things: they’re much better than the Otters, and their shooters were hot (aided in part by a lack of defensive ability from Monterey). Gilling absolutely erupted, scoring 25 of his 28 in the first half, and hitting 7-11 from the arc in the first twenty. The 8 threes he hit (with fifteen left in the game) ties a school record, and the point total was his career high. Greg Plater was also effective, scoring 17 on 6-10 shooting.
The team shot 20 threes in the first half, but Monson said he had no problem with it. “I mean those were wide open shots for Steph and Greg—basically HORSE shots,” he said. “It’s not gonna get any better than that—there’s no offense to be run.” Gilling, after lamenting his chances of getting so many clean looks for the rest of the year, echoed his coach and said, “When I’m open, I’m gonna shoot it…and sometimes when I’m not open, too.” Behind strong shooting and easy post points (36 in the paint), Long Beach rolled on offense, putting up 61 in the first half, and 92 in the first 35 minutes—the student section, of course, seemed very concerned with the team getting to a hundred.
On defense, things weren’t as easy-going. While acknowledging that the speed with which his own team was scoring provided Monterey Bay with more possessions, Monson said his goal had been to keep them in the “low 50s,” which they didn’t do. “The second half was a little better, allowing 24,” he said. The focus of practice the last few days had been entirely defensive, and Monson was hoping for a more consistent performance on that end of the court—”lackadaisical team defense,” as Casper Ware called it, led to 50% shooting in the first half. Ratcheting up the pressure in the second dropped that number to 38%. Rebounding was a bright spot, as they outmuscled CSU Monterey Bay 42-27, and 19-7 on the offensive glass. The 49ers shot poorly from the line again, hitting 13-28—strangely, the exact line they put up in three-point shooting.
But enough about “the game”—what ended up being the story of the night was the dunk contest that seemed to erupt from the opening tip, as five players threw down a total of seven dunks against the Otters, including Plater and Ware, neither known for their high-flying ability. Before the game, a few Monson Maniacs were trying to set the over-under on how many throwdowns there would be against the D2 Otters—the line I heard was five, so I hope you took the over.
Asked about the proliferation of slams, Gilling, Anderson, and Ware looked at each other and laughed, and Ware said, “Uh, it just felt good to be at home, in front of our fans.” Plater’s dunk, which came in traffic, had the highest degree of difficulty—but Ware got the biggest applause because of his size. He said the dunk was his first in a real game. “Oh I can get up from time to time,” he said.
The 49ers will next try to get up against Utah State, their only non-conference home opponent that isn’t Division 2, this Friday at 7:05pm. We’ll have more on that matchup this week, but it should be an important one—a rare game against a team whose talent level isn’t overwhelmingly higher or lower than Long Beach’s, and against a program Monson says is who Long Beach “is aspiring to be.”