Hatten Scores 37 as Long Beach Beats UC Irvine, 75-70

John Hatten scored a career-high 37 points and led Cal State Long Beach to a 75-70 victory over UC Irvine Saturday night in a Big West Conference game before 1,900 in the 49ers’ gym.

“He should have had more,” Coach Joe Harrington said.

Hatten, averaging 14 points per game, missed his first 4 shots and had another streak of 3 misses in the first half. In all, the senior center made 17 of 31 shots.

Hatten, who has been told by Harrington to take over and be more of a scorer, said he was overanxious at the beginning.

“Coach said to relax,” Hatten said. “I knew they were easy shots; it just took time for them to drop.”

And for a while, it seemed as if they all dropped--baseline jumpers, turn-arounds in the lane, inside banks, lay-ins after grabbing rebounds. By halftime Hatten had 23 points and his 20 field goal attempts were only 4 fewer than Irvine had.

In the second half, after the Anteaters took a 49-48 lead on 6 straight point by Jeff Herdman, the 49ers went on a 12-5 run, Hatten getting 10 of those points.

“I thought Hatten had a great game,” Irvine Coach Bill Mulligan said. “We tried to play him different ways.”

But if Hatten was the night’s hero, reserve Rudy Harvey was a close second.

“I didn’t realize Rudy Harvey would get 16 points,” Mulligan said.

Harvey did that on 6 of 9 shooting from the field and 4 of 4 from the foul line. After stealing the ball, he made a driving dunk to extend the lead to 62-53. When Irvine pulled to within 62-59, he made a 3-point play. And when his two free throws with 4:47 to go increased the lead to 69-61, it looked as if Long Beach was home free.

But after a 3-point play by Ricky Butler on a power move over Hatten, another inside basket by Butler and a baseline jumper by Kevin Floyd, the 49er lead was down to 69-68 with 46 seconds left.

Jeff Eastin made both ends of a one-and-one with 36 seconds left for a 71-68 lead.

The victory enabled the 49ers (8-10 overall, 5-4 in the Big West) to stay in fourth place. Irvine (6-11, 3-5) remains in seventh place and is 1-8 on the road.