{"id":8444,"date":"2022-03-10T09:49:59","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T17:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/?p=50000003067"},"modified":"2022-03-10T16:25:42","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T00:25:42","slug":"long-beach-state-ncaa-tournament-bakersfield-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/long-beach-state-ncaa-tournament-bakersfield-game","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach State will try to make the NCAA Tournament, with its first big test at noon today"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Long Beach State men\u2019s basketball team has a long and impressive history. The Beach are one of the only programs in the country to have three coaches in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (Jerry Tarkanian, Tex Winter, and Lute Olson). The team also has a loud and proud local fanbase, and the Black and Gold flags are out all over town this week as Long Beach travels to Henderson, Nevada for the Big West Tournament with a trip to March Madness and the NCAA Tournament on the line.<\/p>\n

Long Beach State won the regular-season conference championship last weekend<\/a> and enters this week\u2019s tournament as the top-seeded team. If they can win today at 12 p.m. against Cal State Bakersfield, they\u2019ll play in the semifinals tomorrow. Win tomorrow and they\u2019d be in the Big West Tournament championship Saturday night on ESPN, trying to make history\u2014because despite all that proud history, the Beach has only made it to the NCAA Tournament nine times, and only twice in this century.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a great regular season and now it\u2019s time to make it a special season,\u201d head coach Dan Monson said after Saturday\u2019s overtime win to clinch the regular-season title.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Beach celebrate their regular season Big West championship last weekend; this week they’re trying to make history in the Big West Tournament. Photo by Stephen Dachman.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This year\u2019s journey has felt special after the Beach opened the season 5-9 then rebounded to win 14 of their last 16 games heading into the postseason with Big West Player of the Year Colin Slater leading the way.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a long decade for the Beach since their last NCAA Tournament appearance in 2012, with some finishes in the bottom half of the conference. Head coach Dan Monson is the program\u2019s all-time winningest coach and was leading the Beach for that 2012 appearance. This year\u2019s Big West Coach of the Year, Monson could make history with three wins this week, becoming just the third coach in program history to lead the program to multiple NCAA Tournaments (Hall of Famers Tex Winter and Lute Olson didn\u2019t).<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Long Beach State game will be streamed live on ESPN+ or fans can follow along with us on Twitter @562sports<\/a> for live courtside updates from Nevada by beat writer JJ Fiddler<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a long decade for the Beach since their last NCAA Tournament appearance in 2012. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":17241,"comment_status":"closed","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":[9,189],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[2730],"class_list":["post-8444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-long-beach-state","tag-ncaa","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8444","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\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8444"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=8444"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}