The Long Beach State men’s basketball team will have to have to keep its dancing shoes in the closet this year.
The top-seeded ‘Niners quest for a repeat trip to the NCAA tournament came to a screeching halt Friday night with a 67-60 loss to No. 4 UC Irvine at the Honda Center.
The loss in the second round of the Big West tournament does not end LBSU’s season though, as it will compete in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), representing the Big West as its regular season champion.
Trailing by just one at the half, The Beach took the lead by as many as seven after the break but could not provide enough scoring punch in the waning minutes.
Big West Player of the Year James Ennis extended his double figure scoring streak to 37 games with 11 points but fouled out and was unavailable down the stretch.
“I’m down on myself a little bit because I let my teammates down,” Ennis said. “I’m a senior, I’m supposed to help my teammates a lot and I feel like I didn’t do my job. Now we just have to go to the NIT and represent Long Beach.”
LBSU head coach Dan Monson disagreed, praising the senior guard for his activity and desire to help his team win.
“We’re here because of him, we won this league because of him,” Monson said. “His energy was unbelievable. He probably just wanted it so much that he got out of control a couple times. I don’t fault a guy for fouling out trying to live his dream. That’s what a true competitor does. If the only thing he did wrong was want it too bad, we’ll live with that.”
LBSU’s other senior, Peter Pappageorge, said the loss is hard to take in, but that the team must re-focus and compete in the NIT.
“The biggest disappointment is we tasted it last year and know how good it was,” he said. “That was our motivation the whole year. We expect to win this league. We really wanted to win this tournament, get back to the NCAA tournament and maybe get hot and get on a roll, but this is pretty disappointing and we’re just going to have to show up next week and treat the NIT as it is the NCAA tournament, show some class and represent this university.”
Tony Freeland, Keala King and Mike Caffey provided most of the scoring for the Beach with 15, 15 and 14, respectively.
The ‘Niners received zero bench scoring, compared to 10 points from the Irvine reserves.
Monson credited his team’s effort and intensity but said it just didn’t do enough offensively to keep up with the Anteaters in the second half.
“I was really pleased with the way we played,” he said, “It was a high level of intensity. It was a high level of defensive focus. It was probably one of our better games in a lot of ways, but when we got [our lead] to 53-46 we came empty about four or five straight possessions.”
Alex Young led the charge for Irvine, tallying a game-high 18 points – including a go-ahead three from the left corner with 3:40 remaining — to go with four assists and three rebounds.
The freshman guard received lots of support from Will Davis II, Chris McNealy and Daman Starring.
Davis compiled 14 points and nine rebounds while McNealy added 13 points and seven boards.
Starring, the team’s leading scorer, only chipped in seven points but dished out a game-high seven assists.
Irvine will go on to face Pacific in the Big West championship game Saturday night at 7:30.