A.J. Spencer has become a reliable starter at Long Beach State

For most Long Beach State fans, almost everything about the week of March 20, 2013 was something they’d like to forget.

Almost everything.

That was the week the 49ers stumbled into Waco, Texas to face Baylor in the first round of the National Invitational Tournament. Fresh off of a loss in the Big West Tournament semifinals, the unmotivated 49ers went on to endure one of the worst losses in school history, a 112-66 drubbing on national television.

By that time, head coach Dan Monson and his staff knew that roster changes would be coming. They knew there would be holes to fill and were scrambling to find solutions.

One of those solutions was found in Hutchinson, Kansas, the site of the 2013 National Junior College Tournament. While most of the 49ers were on the road trip to Waco, assistant coaches Eric Brown and Rod Palmer traveled north to Hutchinson. It was there that they saw A.J. Spencer, captain of the Hutchinson Junior College basketball team that went 32-3 that year.

“We had no prior knowledge of him, had never seen him play or anything, but he played very well on a huge stage,” Monson said. “His recruiting went from not knowing who he was in the middle of March to signing in the middle of April.”

Spencer’s team lost in the second round of the tournament, but he came away with an opportunity to play at LBSU. It was a school he had known and seen because of its tendency to schedule games in tough road environments — like the one in Allen Fieldhouse, home of the Kansas Jayhawks.

“The thing that put them up above every other mid-major was that we went here and played the best teams every year and had the hardest preseason,” Spencer said.  “I wanted to play against the best and have a chance to beat the best.”

Spencer got a chance to do just that right away at The Beach, as the 49ers faced Arizona for their second game of the season. They also played 120 miles from Spencer’s hometown when they faced Kansas State in Manhattan, Kansas. It was his first time returning home since he got out to Long Beach, which he said is most different from Kansas in that it has a lot more scenery.

“In Kansas, we have a couple lakes, we have a couple hills,” Spencer said. “We don’t have what they have out here with mountains, great beaches, beautiful people…basketball out here, you get to play basketball all the time because it’s always warm.”

Spencer’s hometown of Shawnee lies just outside of Kansas City on the eastern border of the state. Spencer said that while the Midwestern stereotype of nothing but plains and farms may be true of parts of the state, he grew up in a more urban setting.

“Where I’m from is a big city, like a million people, so it’s not as rural as everybody thinks it is,” he said, noting that the plains are mostly in western Kansas. “We went to UC Davis this past weekend, and that reminded me of western Kansas.”

Since coming to The Beach, Spencer has grown into a reliable starter. Monson said what sets Spencer apart is what he doesn’t do.

“I always say A.J. [Spencer] doesn’t do anything great, but he does everything good,” he said. “He doesn’t do anything bad.”

Spencer epitomizes the change LBSU wanted to make following the week of March 20, 2013. While Keala King, Tony Freeland and the rest of the 49ers were being annihilated on the court at Baylor’s Ferrell Center, Spencer was making his decision to come to The Beach.

“A.J. [Spencer] is a quality person,” Monson said.  “He’s a man, he knows right from wrong and he’s a good student. He represents this university the way we want it represented.”