{"id":825,"date":"2011-03-12T05:43:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-12T05:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/sports\/long-beach-to-face-santa-barbara-for-big-west-tourney-championship\/"},"modified":"2011-03-12T05:43:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-12T05:43:00","slug":"long-beach-to-face-santa-barbara-for-big-west-tourney-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/long-beach-to-face-santa-barbara-for-big-west-tourney-championship","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach To Face Santa Barbara For Big West Tourney Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conference champion Long Beach State will contend for the Big West Conference tournament championship on Saturday night, after defeating No. 7 UC Riverside in a 74-63 contest at the Honda Center in Anaheim on Friday night behind 21 points and 9 rebounds from First Team All-Conference guard Larry Anderson.<\/p>\n

The win places Long Beach in the conference championship game with No. 5 UC Santa Barbara at 5:30pm on Saturday at the Honda Center. Santa Barbara defeated No. 3 Cal State Northridge handily on Friday night, 83-63. The winner will move on to represent the Big West in the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n

“We’re right where we want to be,” said Anderson. “We just need to keep the mindset and stay hungry.”<\/p>\n

Long Beach jumped out to a 15-0 lead against Riverside on Friday and took a 40-28 lead into halftime when Anderson hit a buzzer-beating three. Conference Player of the Year Casper Ware was quiet on the night, with several big shots but finishing with just 16 points on 3-9 shooting. The 49ers compensated with 17 points from guard Greg Plater and 13 points and 9 rebounds from forward T.J. Robinson. Their hot start carried them through more difficult times.<\/p>\n

“Long Beach got the run on us really quick and hard, built up a sizeable lead and put us in a hole,” said UC Riverside head coach Jim Woolridge. “They responded like a champion would respond.”<\/p>\n

Long Beach Post Sports will have live updates from the Saturday night game at the Twitter page @LBPOSTSports<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conference champion Long Beach State will contend for the Big West Conference tournament championship on Saturday night.<\/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-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825","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=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}