Pacific Takes Advantage of Long Beach’s Ineptitude

STOCKTON — About half a season remains for Long Beach State, so there’s still time . . . to show a pulse.

Other than that, the 49ers really don’t have much to feel good about or fall back on. Not with what keeps happening each time they take the court.

Long Beach, seemingly moving backward with every game, lost for the eighth time in 10 outings Saturday night, 74-57, to Pacific in front 4,413 at the Spanos Center. Long Beach is fading fast--and running out of excuses.

“How hard is this? It’s really, really hard,” said guard Brandon Titus, who paced another woeful 49er offensive attack with 13 points.

“We have a lot of hard work ahead of us; we have to correct our mistakes, but it’s not just that. I know we have the talent to turn this around--no doubt. But if we don’t start passing the ball and executing our offense, the whole season is going to be like this.”

Or worse.

Long Beach was never really in Saturday’s game, which shouldn’t be big news to its fans. An especially discouraging fact for Long Beach was that Pacific did basically whatever it wanted to without the help of its standout 7-foot center, Michael Olowokandi.

Olowokandi has missed the last two games after suffering a sprained left knee against Cal State Fullerton on Jan. 11. No matter, though, because Pacific had more than enough to cruise.

Reserve guard Tim Bowman scored 14 points to lead four Pacific players in double figures. Vic Trierweiler filled in well for Olowokandi, scoring 10 points and grabbing 10 rebounds.

Winless UC Irvine is now all that separates fifth-place Long Beach (5-9 overall, 1-3 in the conference) from the bottom of the Western Division standings. The 49ers were the overwhelming preseason pick to win the title. The current outlook, however, is somewhat less bright.

“We just need to start playing together,” Titus said. “And we need to start talking. We just don’t talk enough out there. It’s almost like we’re afraid to say, ‘Watch your back.’ ”

No such problems for the Tigers. First-place Pacific (13-1, 4-0) extended its conference-leading winning streak to 13 games.

Pacific shredded Long Beach’s 1-3-1 zone, getting good shots whenever it pleased. Pacific shot 63.2% in the first half (50% for the game), and held a 37-27 halftime lead. A 6-0 spurt immediately after halftime gave Pacific a 43-27 lead with 18:34 left. With the way Long Beach played, the game might as well have ended right there.

“They’re so spread out in that zone, we knew we’d get good shots,” said Tiger guard Monty Owens, who had eight points and six assists. “We just knew we had to keep spacing them out and we’d get a lot of open shots.”

Like everyone else in the Spanos Center, Long Beach Coach Wayne Morgan recognized just how easily Pacific dismantled his defense.

“That was very frustrating [to watch],” Morgan said. “They have a very good zone offense.”

And it didn’t help that swingman James Cotton, who entered the game as the Big West’s leading scorer with a 24.3 average, was limited to 11 points. Guard Corey Anders and his helpers hounded Cotton into missing 11 of his 13 shots.

“You know he’s going to get the ball, you just have to limit his touches,” Anders said. “You could see he was getting a little frustrated. He started taking harder shots and he wasn’t letting the game come to him.”

A weary Cotton agreed with the assessment.

“After not doing something for a while, you want to make something happen,” Cotton said. “I’m still learning. I’ll get better.”

But will the 49ers?