The Ags stay in SoCal with another important and winnable road game. The series with The Beach dates back to 1960. Back in the old days, the team then known as the 49ers dominated 20-2 until fairly recently. Of course, for most of those games The Beach was Div.1. Since 2014, the Ags hold an 8-3 edge, despite Long Beach having swept us last season. Last year, they finished the conference 12-3. This year, they are mediocre (strangely because the preseason poll had them at 3rd), lingering in the middle of the Big West. They have now won three in a row, however, with Thursday’s night’s win over Cal Poly. Head Coach Dan Monson might not be having a good year, but no team can take any team of his for granted at the Pyramid.
Aggie fans might remember Joel Murray who scored 16.7 ppg last year and dropped 19 at Davis in a 70-63 Beach victory. This year, the senior guard leads his team in both scoring (15.7 ppg.) and assists (3.8apg.). They are kind of the polar opposite of CSU Bakersfield, as they are the worst defensive team in the conference (allowing 74.5 ppg.) while scoring 77.1 ppg. Trailing only UCI in the Big West. Also returning for the Beach is big man Lassina Traore, who leads the league in rebounding at 9.9 rpg.
This will be a very tough game for the Aggies. LB is starting to play much better basketball. They are very long and athletic and they will be tough on the boards especially on the offensive boards. They have a lot of overall speed and they like to get out and run and drive the ball to the basket. We'll need to try and slow them down and cut off the lanes to the basket on defense.
Robbie Beasley injured his knee in the first 5 minutes of the Bakersfield game and did not return to action so his playing status is unknown for us at this point.
Vegas currently has us as 3.5 point underdogs. The over-under is 154.5 so they're betting on a fairly high scoring game with Long Beach favored to win by a 56.7% confidence and the Aggies having a 51% confidence of covering the spread.
We're hanging in there but we not getting back on defense to stop the breakaways and fast breaks from LB. LB does this a lot and I'm sure the the Aggies know it but aren't covering it. We can't go to sleep like that on defense. LB will run us ragged every chance they get.
The Beach is really exploiting Christian's absence at both ends of the court. They're shooting 57.9% on a lot of dunks. Even though a lot of those are on fast breaks, I suspect that if Anigwe were out there, their percentage would be a bit lower.
I don't like these officials; they've missed a lot of calls both ways and called a lot of phantom fouls. In one instance, a Beach player passed the ball off an Ag's foot and the ref called it a kicked ball. Coach Les was arguing that it isn't a kicked ball if it is the result of an errant pass and I think he was right.
Pretty amazing that we are down only 1 point at 38-37 at the half without Beasley or Anigwe playing. Pepper and Johnson have 33 of our 37 points and they won't be able to carry the offense entirely by themselves. Defensively, we have to eliminate the unforced TO's and slow down their fast breaks.
68-68 at 4:00. Need someone beside Eli or TY to score. They look a bit tired. Les will have to really manage time outs and the clock to milk this one out