Led by twenty-one points from freshman Casper Ware and double figures from four others, the Long Beach State 49ers opened Big West Conference play with a confident performance, beating the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos by a score of 76-64. The 49ers improved to a 6-7 record, matching last season’s entire win total. Head coach Dan Monson remained unimpressed.
“It doesn’t mean much to me,” he said after the game, adding that this season’s team barely even resembles last year’s. “This is a whole different group with whole different goals.”
One of those goals was to improve upon an abysmal conference record, which the 49ers seem to be on the right path for after defeating a Gaucho team that was selected by many to finish second in the Big West behind only Cal State Northridge. Santa Barbara played without junior forward Jesse Byrd, who leads the team in rebounding and is third in scoring, and Long Beach’s interior players exploited the void left by the 6’8” forward. The 49ers excelled on the boards – a problem area so far on the season – by a count of 38-29.
Monson praised the performances of senior post players Andrew Fleming and Brian Freeman, who posted a double-double in just twenty minutes of play.
“Today’s focus for me was just rebounding and being tough,” Freeman said of his 11-point, 10-rebound performance (even nailing a three-pointer in the first half). After a subpar performance at Oregon earlier in the week, Monson says he challenged Freeman and Fleming to step up.
Friday night’s other shining star was freshman point guard Casper Ware, who scored 21 on 7-13 shooting to lead the 49ers. Ware was the opportunist of the five players leading Long Beach State’s scoring attack.
“Today I decided to calm down and just take the shots they were giving me,” he said. “We just settled down, trusted the offense, moved the ball around and hit the shots when they were open.”
It was one of the 49ers’ finest offensive displays of the year, a drastic improvement over an early season offense that could hardly find any one of its four left feet. But on Friday, the 49ers ran effectively against man, zone, trapping and pressing defenses of all sorts attempted by the Gauchos – most likely geared mainly around slowing down Long Beach leading scorer Donovan Morris, but vulnerable to the 49er attack nonetheless.
Morris managed 16 points, anyway, on a variety of open three-point looks creative drives and fadeaway jumpers. The Gauchos deployed tough, physical guards to smother Morris with or without the ball, perhaps foreshadowing what the senior scorer can expect for the rest of the conference schedule. Morris was selective with his shots and made six of eleven attempts.
“Any day we have guys capable of putting up ten, or fifteen or even 20 points,” said Freeman. “The big thing with this team is our unselfishness.”
Lest we forget the other scorers, Stephan Gilling made four-of-six from the field for 11 points while T.J. Robinson turned in another another impressive performance against the depleted Gaucho frontcourt with ten points and nine rebounds. But it was Ware who impressed most, scaling back his aggressiveness and speed for patience and opportunity, hitting all three of his 3-point attempts and turning the ball over just twice. His overwhelming work ethic is already turning heads, the 5’9” point guard spending more than ninety minutes shooting in the Pyramid on Friday morning in order to redeem a poor Oregon performance.
“The most overrated thing in a point guard is how tall he is,” said Monson. “Casper is a real competitor and has a great sense for the game. He’s our point guard of the future”
Few would argue that Monson has found his point guard, but even fewer would argue that the offense could use further tinkering. The 49ers still struggle with turnovers, committing 17 against Santa Barbara. Even more dire is Long Beach State’s free-throw shooting, which was on woeful display last night as they made seventeen of thirty (though the 49ers used them to pull away down the stretch). Last night’s game would have been much closer had the Gauchos not been slightly more despicable from the line, shooting 12-22.
“When the biggest negative is your free-throw shooting, I think we’re doing pretty good,” said Monson.
That’s certainly one way of looking at it. One could also point out that stellar three-point shooting – thanks to better shot selection – nearly negated struggles from the line. But most important was something that will show up in no box score (and therefore few game reports): attitude. The 49ers brought swagger, confidence and calm that did not waver when they fell behind by seven in the first half.
They would respond with a 21-5 run, leading by seven themselves by halftime.
“We’ve done it before,” said Freeman, reflecting the attitude of a team that is learning to trust itself. “We know we can play tough. Temple had a big lineup too and we got the win against them.”