Long Beach State’s men’s basketball head coach Dan Monson has been consistently known to mash up grueling non-conference schedules on a yearly basis. And you could tell by this season, coming off a 15-19 overall record which led to a fourth-place finish in the Big West Conference.
Well, next season is no different, as LBSU will travel to the east coast to play at Michigan State. The game will be a part of the 49ers non-conference schedule in the 2017-2018 season.
“There is a contract in place with that game and I think with a lot of new faces this year our schedule will not be as many of those marquee games of the past years,” Monson said. “But certainly, we still want to put our players in a position against the best competition so we know where we stack up — and Michigan state will be one of the top two or three teams in the country.”
Last season, the 49ers traveled 15,125 miles on a nine-game road trip that featured games against four teams ranked in the Top 10 at the end of the year: North Carolina, Louisville, UCLA and Kansas. That led them to finishing with 23,000 miles in the non-conference schedule.
While Michigan State returns mostly intact, as the Spartans are coming off a 20-15 season and are likely to be a preseason top-three team in 2017-2018.
For Monson, it’s a trip down memory lane as his father was an assistant coach for Michigan State when Monson was in 9th and 10th grade. Monson is looking forward to taking his team back to East Lansing, Michigan and spent seven years competing in the Big Ten conference as head coach at the University of Minnesota.
With the transfers coming to LBSU it will be interesting to see how the transfers react to the tough schedule that is being put together in the next couple of weeks. As for other opponents the 49ers could face Monson is waiting for the 49ers schedule to be finished and will release the schedule when it’s complete.
“If those schools release them that’s fine but we’re not doing it until we have them all in place.” Monson said.