A ferocious dunk on the first play of the game sent the sold-out crowd into a frenzy on Homecoming night as the Long Beach State men’s basketball team picked up a 74-64 win for its first victory of the season.
The 49ers (1-1) regrouped quickly after their loss to BYU, as they had a rare back-to-back to start the season. They returned to a raucous crowd inside the Walter Pyramid for Homecoming, a game that head Coach Dan Monson says gets more special every year.
“I’m nostalgic like I’m an old man that’s been here for 35 years,” Monson said. “The campus has changed since I’ve been here in seven years. With the addition of our weight room, our new locker room, our scoreboard and just the atmosphere of Homecoming when I first got here to where it is now, it’s really cool.”
Monson said the improvements come from an administration that wants to be successful, and the progress the school has made since his arrival seven years ago has been really fun to see.
The 49ers got on a roll early on against SFSU, with senior point guard Mike Caffey throwing an alley-oop to Samuels, who led the team in scoring with 14 points. Monson said they didn’t play as well as they wanted, but that it was a good game nonetheless.
“It gave us a lot to work on,” Monson said. “SFSU is a very difficult, quick turnaround team. We never really got into a great offensive rhythm. It wasn’t what you picture for an opening game, but it also wasn’t a disaster by any means.”
Playing the second game of a back-to-back, Monson said he was hoping to only play Caffey around 20 minutes after he was limping around in the loss against BYU. Caffey was mostly a facilitator early on.
“I think [Caffey] wanted to get his teammates going,” Monson said. “When they were in zone, he had four assists. But I think that was Mike’s way of trying to get some of the other guys some confidence.”
One of the things that have plagued the team early is the amount of turnovers they have committed, a trend Caffey expects to reverse as the season progresses.
“We just have to slow down,” Caffey said. “I feel like we’re speeding up right now, trying to make the homerun play. I feel like later in the season we’ll slow down and get used to the tempo.”
Monson said he’s excited about where the team is offensively, but disappointed about where his team is defensively. The 49ers will face another tough test when they travel to Cincinnati to face Xavier, a game Monson thinks could bolster his team’s confidence.
“You win a game like that, then all of a sudden your confidence in each other and your defense will be at a different level,” Monson said. “We’re not going to spend much time on this game. It’s over. We need to move on and work on ourselves and work on Xavier.”