Men's Basketball, Sports

Beach men take down mid-major power Utah State

Box score

Seemingly everything was going right for the Long Beach State men’s basketball team against an old Big West Conference foe on Friday night.

T.J. Robinson and Casper Ware combined for 44 points in a 75-62 win over visiting Utah State in front of 2,656 at the Walter Pyramid.

Head coach Dan Monson said he felt like the victory was the most complete game his team has played all season.

“I really was proud of our guys taking a game plan and executing it,” Monson said. “Your only chance against a team like that is to disrupt them and frustrate them. … We had them frustrated enough that we had them doing things they don’t normally do.”

The Aggies (6-4) came into the game as the 24th best 3-point shooting team in the nation (as of Dec. 14), but were held to just 20 percent from distance by the 49ers.

Utah State’s three leading 3-point shooters — Preston Medlin, Pooh Williams and Jared Quayle — went a combined 2-of-11 from beyond the arc.

“I was just worrying about defense first,” Ware said about covering Quayle. “Just to get him frustrated, that was my main key. It’s really hard to stop a good player like that, so I just wanted to get him frustrated.”

T.J. Robinson led LBSU (6-4) with 25 points and a game-high 11 rebounds to record his sixth double-double of the season. Ware also contributed 19 points and a game-high seven assists.

It was the fifth straight game that Ware has scored in double figures.

“I thought Casper controlled the game,” Monson said. “Not just offensively because some shots went in … he went in there and made one or two bad decisions in the paint, but he made about 10 good ones. The one unheralded thing is, you follow Utah State this year and show somebody else that makes Quayle go 2-for-11.”

The Aggies were led on offense by Tai Wesley’s 22 points on 10-of-12 shooting, as the junior controlled the paint for most of his 32 minutes of floor time.

The ‘Niners went on a 10-0 run to take a 14-point lead at the 11:56 mark of the second half. The run was capped off by a steal and dunk by Robinson that caused the crowd to erupt.

Utah State got to within 13 points late in the second half, but Robinson put the exclamation point on the win with a dunk over Nate Bendall. The throw down once again caused the crowd to come alive, but they suddenly went silent in disbelief over the jam.

“I don’t know what came out of me,” Robinson said. “I just went up with intensity and dunked it.”

There was no shortage of intensity in the first half either as both teams traded baskets, as well as verbal jabs aimed towards the referees.

The game reached a boiling point when Bendall slammed the ball off the court, which caused the crowd to boo the Utah State forward.

LBSU will next travel to face Loyola Marymount at 8 p.m. at the Gersten Pavilion on Monday night.

“I told them ‘if you want to be Utah State, Utah State wouldn’t go over to Loyola and have a letdown,'” Monson said. “For where we want to go, [the game against LMU] becomes a must win.”

 

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