<\/div>\nFrustration. Helplessness. Disappointment. The fans of Long Beach State left the Anaheim Convention Center last night with a range of emotions after the 65-60 loss that ended the 49ers’ season at the hand of the Pacific Tigers. It hurt like the world had crashed down.<\/p>\n
But it was nothing compared to what the players felt.<\/p>\n
Casper Ware<\/span> was obviously devastated on the sidelines. Donovan Morris<\/span> was speechless in the postgame press conference. Head coach Dan Monson blamed himself.<\/p>\n “My job is to do the best I can with what I have, and I don’t know if I did that,” Monson said of the season that Long Beach ended at 15-15 overall, and with a second place finish in the Big West Conference.<\/p>\n “At least we did it fighting and scratching and clawing.” But Long Beach State was hampered by two issues during the loss: an inability to guard Pacific’s outside shooters, and a reluctance to move away from their own jump shots. Tiger guard Chad Troyer<\/span> scored a game-high 22 points on 6-9 three-point shooting, while Pacific shot 11-20 from three as a team. Long Beach, on the other hand, enjoyed much more success inside the paint but continued to shoot from long range, connecting on just four of 20 attempts.<\/p>\n Freshman forward T.J. Robinson<\/span> led the way with 21 points and six rebounds, while Morris<\/span> ended his career as a 49er with 13 points on 5-12 shooting.<\/p>\n Long Beach State continued to launch three-pointers against Pacific’s zone defense despite being ice-cold from the perimeter. The 49ers were 4-20 from three-point range but 16-29 from inside the arc. The Tigers’ stifling 3-2 zone defense, with 6’6″ Joe Ford<\/span> on the point position, halted any Long Beach penetration. The 49ers did not make a field goal for one 10:52 stretch in the second half. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Troyer<\/span> continued to bomb away. Long Beach’s insistence on applying full-court pressure and zone defenses led to assignment confusion and open seams for Pacific. Troyer<\/span> exploited those weaknesses whenever he had the chance.<\/p>\n “Most of my shots wrren’t even coming from our offense,” he said. “We just did a great job of moving the ball and penetrating the gaps.”<\/p>\n The 49ers hung tough during the drought, and rallied to slice through Pacific’s lead. Several full-court press steals led to easy lay-ins, until the Beach found themselves down three with 0:07.5 seconds to play. Ware<\/span> found Morris<\/span> at the top of the key for a three-point shot that would have tied the game, but was just wide and Pacific sealed the victory with the rebound.<\/p>\n The 49ers end the season finishing second in the Big West after many expected them to finish fifth or worse due to an abysmal 6-25 record last season along with heavy reliance on four freshmen players. But Long Beach started out the conference schedule on a 5-0 roll to take an early lead in the standings. Since then, they alternated between wins and losses and conceded the top spot to Cal State Northridge. Pacific brought a five-game winning streak into last night’s game and will face Northridge tonight for the title.<\/p>\n “I will say that I’m proud of my guys, but this is a profession about winning,” Monson said. “We’ve got work to do to get this to where we need to go.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 49ers gave up too many three-pointers and couldn’t hit their own, as their season ends with the semifinal loss.<\/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-4427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4427","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=4427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4427"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4427"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Morris<\/span> took little solace in that knowledge, however, unable to answer when asked how he would remember this season – probably because he never thought he’d have to answer that question so soon. He and the 49ers were expecting nothing but victory.<\/p>\n