Second-year head coach Jody Wynn started the turnaround process for the Long Beach State women’s basketball team last season, and many believe her recruiting prowess could translate into a bright future for the program.
But it may be tough to outshine the 49ers of the late 1980s.
Looking back
Cindy Brown and Penny Toler helped propel the team to its first-ever Final Four appearance in 1987, and Toler led the team back in 1988. In charge of the team was head coach Joan Bonvicini, who guided the ‘Niners to 325 victories, 10 consecutive NCAA Tournament trips and 10 Big West Conference titles in 12 seasons.
“We were very exciting to watch,” said Bonvicini, who now coaches at Seattle University and will return to coach against LBSU on Friday at 7 p.m. “We were ahead of our time.
“It’s a thing that evolved over time. When I took over, Long Beach was good but not a great team.”
Those days are seemingly light years away in today’s basketball landscape.
The average sports fan of the ESPN era is aware of Connecticut drubbing its opponents by 30-plus points and dominating its way to national championships. However, a glance at the record books will tell you that LBSU once defeated San Jose State, 149-69, on Feb. 16, 1987 to set the NCAA single-game team scoring record. In that same contest, coincidentally, Brown set the NCAA single-game individual record with 60 points.
Both records still stand today.
“Cindy was definitely one of the greatest women’s basketball players I’ve known,” Toler, now the general manager of the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, said via e-mail. “A fierce competitor who talked the talk and walked the walk, she was an extremely hard worker. You will not find many players better than Cindy.”
And that’s just a snippet from one game, from one season in a seemingly forgotten team history.
LBSU was a Pacific West/Big West Conference powerhouse, recording 43 consecutive conference victories — currently seventh longest in NCAA history — from 1987 to 1990.
The 49ers didn’t win national titles, but they did appear in the final Associated Press Top 25 regular-season poll for 13 consecutive seasons starting in 1979. Among those finishes, The Beach was ranked in the AP’s top 5 twice (1985 and ’87).
“It was the definitely one of the highlights of my earlier career,” said Toler, who will present the game ball on Friday. “Being ranked in the top 10 every year was awesome and having the opportunity to compete against the best in the country, what more could you ask for as a competitor?”
The turning point
On the Southern California basketball scene, LBSU finished higher than USC in the polls from 1987 to 1991, and the Trojans failed to crack the Top 25 poll in those final three seasons.
But in the spring of 1990, the power shift in Southern California women’s basketball started. That was when highly touted Lisa Leslie, a 6-foot-5 scoring machine who once dropped 101 points in a single half in high school, chose the Women of Troy over the 49ers.
In fact, it took a sudden change of heart on Leslie’s verbal commitment.
According to a Daily 49er article on May 15, 1990: “The day before she was to finalize her plans to become a 49er, Leslie changed her mind and on Monday announced she would play for the USC Women of Troy next fall.”
The next shoe to drop was when Bonvicini, who never won less than 24 games in a season during her tenure, decided to take the head coaching job at Arizona in 1991.
“I definitely would have stayed (if Leslie chose Long Beach),” Bonvicini said. “We probably would have won a couple national titles.
“But when it came down to it, players started going to these programs that we were beating. I’m a competitor and I want to win … and I could see the handwriting on the wall.”
Today’s reality
Soon after, the 49ers’ run of Top 25 appearances — and string of 30 consecutive winning seasons — ended in 1992. That was the same year the program made its last NCAA Tournament appearance.
Meanwhile, the Women of Troy returned to the national polls and, a season later, USC named former star Cheryl Miller its head coach. Among her players were Leslie and Jody Anton, who is now more commonly known as Jody Wynn.
Now, Wynn is trying to “Bring It Back” — or, so says the slogan on the back of the current 49ers’ warm-up shirts.
“It’s about bringing back the tradition of great women’s basketball,” Wynn said. “We want to bring back the banners, the championships, NCAA appearances — and just storied tradition.”
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