Several buzz words were thrown around in the post-game press conference following Long Beach State\u2019s surprising 90-79 loss at home to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo on Saturday afternoon. Words like \u201cunprepared,\u201d \u201clack of focus,\u201d and \u201cembarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those words will look great as newspaper quotes\u2014a team repenting\u2014but they fail to explain exactly what happened on the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnprepared\u201d does not explain the troubles with interior defense. \u201cLack of focus\u201d does not explain why Long Beach State failed to penetrate the Cal Poly zone defense. And \u201cembarassing\u201d does not explain why the 49ers devolved strictly into jump shooters when they fell behind.<\/p>\n
Long Beach State head coach Dan Monson explained that the loss was a simple case of being mentally unfocused and outworked on their home floor. But that\u2019s a philosophical answer to a strategic question, painting a picture of a team that lost due to lack of effort when really it had more to do with on-court breakdowns and tactical failures.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong; they also lost because of a lack of effort and mental focus. But it was the decisions made and the opportunities lost that cost Long Beach State the game, and dropped them to a 2-3 conference record (8-10 overall). The 49ers had two major breakdowns in the first half that brought them to halftime with a 13-point deficit at halftime, and two fatal decisions that sealed the game in the second half.<\/p>\n
Cal Poly SLO was able to get to the basket\u2014nearly uncontested\u2014whenever they wanted. In fact, the Mustangs took an early 12-7 lead before even attempting a shot outside the paint. Mustang forward David Hanson came off the bench, inhaling offensive rebounds and abusing interior defenders to score 22 points in 23 minutes. The 49ers were slow to rotate in help-side defense and allowed SLO to penetrate almost at will. As a result, five Mustangs scored in double figures and the team shot 51.5% from the field.<\/p>\n
Offensively, the 49ers struggled against a 2-3 zone defense for the second consecutive game, and both Greg Plater and Stephan Gilling agreed when asked if their offense was \u201cstagnant.\u201d Gilling even said: \u201cIf we move the ball around and be smart with the ball then we shouldn\u2019t even see a zone,\u201d and he\u2019s exactly right. The 49ers should have been able to pull the Mustangs out of the zone. <\/p>\n
But with little team movement and rare penetration, Long Beach State was content to move the ball around the perimeter on too many possessions, playing exactly into the hands of the defense. Success came either with a flashing post player working the high-low game from the free throw line, or when a driving guard drew defenders and found an open T.J. Robinson or Eugene Phelps roaming the baseline. In both instances, movement and penetration resulted in lay-ups; but Long Beach failed to exploit that gold mine.<\/p>\n
Cal Poly took a lead by exploiting the 49er inside, but consider this: for as poorly as they defended, Long Beach State lost by only 11 points while shooting 40.6% to the Mustangs\u2019 51.5%. So even though the 49ers allowed too many easy points inside, they still could have contended and possibly even won if they had taken advantage of the obvious opportunities on offense. Why the most athletic team in the Big West Conference failed to attack a defense that wilts against movement deserved an explanation. And \u201cunprepared\u201d doesn\u2019t cover it.<\/p>\n
Long Beach State trailed 46-33 at the half, and after they came out for the second half on Thursday with guns blazing in a similar situation against UC Santa Barbara, there was optimism that the 49ers would fight their way back into Saturday\u2019s game with intense pressure defense and an uptempo offensive attack. When that didn\u2019t happen, and Long Beach State continued to struggle defending the basket, coach Monson switched to a small-ball lineup in an attempt to take back the game with outside shooting and a full-court press. It was a move that he later called \u201cdesperation.\u201d<\/p>\n
After shooting 5-10 from three in the first half, Long Beach State was just 3-17 from beyond the arc in the second half. This was not a unique circumstance. The 49ers have made a habit of making a bad situation worse when they try to shoot their way out of a deficit with three-pointers. Instead of using their athleticism to attack the Cal Poly zone defense, Long Beach State played right into its hands and launched one jumper after another. Casper Ware and Larry Anderson were 0-2, Stephan Gilling was 0-4, Jesse Woodard was 1-3, and Greg Plater was 2-6 from the behind the three-point line in the second half. Meanwhile, the team shot 13-23 (56.5%) from inside the arc.<\/p>\n
The other end of this double-edged second half sword was the fullcourt press that the 49ers used in an attempt to push the tempo and rattle Cal Poly SLO into turnovers. With four guards in the game, the plan was to use quickness and pressure to their advantage. Two things killed this plan. <\/p>\n
Number one, coach Monson has said more than once this season that the press was not designed as a tool to create turnovers but more as a means of disrupting the opposition\u2019s offensive flow. But on Saturday, the 49ers used the press in an effort to steal the ball back. The press was used in the exact opposite way that it was designed, and that left it susceptible to attack from the Mustangs. That\u2019s exactly what happened, especially since this press calls for an athletic big man to play an integral role in the backcourt pressure and, remember, Long Beach had a small lineup in the game. <\/p>\n
Which brings us to second half strategy-killer number two: For the majority of the pressing in the second half, T.J. Robinson was playing a trapping role in the press and that\u2014at best\u2014left 6-foot-5 Larry Anderson to protect the basket against attacking Mustangs that had just broken the 49ers\u2019 simple press. For every turnover produced by the press, there were at least 3-5 times that 49er defenders were caught out of position and allowed the opposing team to attack the basket against an undersized defender. Consider the fact that Long Beach State pulled away from UCSB on Thursday night in the second half, when they moved away<\/em> from the fullcourt press and settled into hassling man-to-man pressure.<\/p>\n Make no mistake, the 49ers played like they expected to walk into the gym and win this game, but they did not necessarily play badly. Remember, they shot 48.6% from two-point range and committed just five turnovers in the entire game. No, they did not play badly.<\/p>\n They just made fatal decisions, like shifting to a jump shooting strategy in the second half (resulting in 29.6% three-point shooting for the game) and using a small-ball lineup (that made it easy for the Mustangs to attack the basket and outrebound the 49ers by 17 in the second half).<\/p>\n Monson referred to his second half decisions as \u201cdesperation,\u201d and in the end those desperate moves didn\u2019t do much to help the 49ers\u2019 cause.<\/p>\n Monson repeatedly said that his team was mentally unprepared, but said that they also knew what to expect from the Mustangs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like we were surprised they were in zone. It wasn\u2019t like they ran anything we didn\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cI know it\u2019s my job to know but right now I\u2019m kind of at a loss for why we played like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Greg Plater (16 points) had an emphatic answer.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a heart problem,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody played with any kind of heart or passion out there. It\u2019s embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n Seated next to him, Stephan Gilling said that the team tends to get comfortable after a win and admitted that they may have looked past Cal Poly. He also said that the rigorous non-conference schedule against several Top-25 opponents may have \u201ctricked\u201d the 49ers into thinking that they could roll through the Big West, painting the picture of a team that is struggling to adjust to the pressure of playing with a bullseye on their chests. They\u2019re certainly still talented enough to win the conference, but it will take a dramatic shift.<\/p>\n A dramatic shift in \u201cheart\u201d and \u201cfocus,\u201d yes. But also in strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Long Beach State dropped their first home game of the season to Cal Poly SLO in an effort that some called “unprepared” but was more likely due to strategic errors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2377"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2377"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}