Long Beach Hits Roadblock Away From Home

By JASON REID

Jan. 31, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Encouraged by two home victories last week, Long Beach State hit the road trying to turn its season around.

The 49ers asserted things would be different. And believing they were better than their record, they regained a swagger in their step usually reserved for winners.

Not so fast.

Long Beach is still a long way from feeling too giddy about its play--or even relatively proud. New Mexico State gladly pounded that into the 49ers with an 84-64 Big West Conference victory Thursday night before 5,704 at the Pan American Center.

The game was over by halftime because Long Beach, in order, didn’t box out, play decent half-court defense or run its offense with half a clue. Long Beach also committed enough silly turnovers to lose on that front alone.

“This is very frustrating,” Coach Wayne Morgan said. “We were doing things that I thought we had corrected four or five games ago, but obviously we haven’t corrected them.”

New Mexico State’s rout stopped a two-game winning streak for Long Beach, which dropped to 7-10 overall and 3-4 in the Western Division. Long Beach has lost nine in a row at Las Cruces, last winning here in February, 1988.

“This hurts a lot because we had a lot of momentum from winning those two games last week,” guard James Cotton said. “This is like a big step backward for us.”

Cotton can’t catch a flight out of this place fast enough.

The Big West’s leading scorer, Cotton has made only 12 of 45 field-goal attempts (26.6%) in his last two games at the Pan American Center. On Thursday, Cotton had 19 points but missed 15 of 22 shots from the field and 11 of 12 three-point attempts.

New Mexico State (10-7, 4-3) stopped Cotton early. The Aggies’ matchup zone defense made Cotton shoot from way out and he wasn’t connecting. Guard Brandon Titus, who scored a game-high 23 points, kept Long Beach close until midway through the first half.

That’s when Aggie forward Enoch Davis took over. Davis scored eight of his 17 points during a 16-0 run. His three-pointer with 5:06 left in the half gave New Mexico State a 33-16 lead.

Long Beach cut New Mexico State’s lead to 43-32 with 18:23 to go in the game on a layup by center Ike Nwankwo. But New Mexico State went on a 15-2 run to push the lead to 58-34 with 12:07 remaining. Long Beach shot 23.1% from the field in the first half and 32.8% for the game.

“Coach [Neil McCarthy] told us they would play hard in the beginning,” said Aggie forward Charles Gosa, who had 14 points and seven rebounds. “But then after that, well, we knew we could do basically whatever we wanted to as the game went on.”

The Aggies went down the lane pretty much at will. And many of Long Beach’s 18 turnovers--passing the ball where your teammates aren’t, stepping out of bounds repeatedly, etc.--just shouldn’t occur this late in a season.

But the 49ers were even worse in another aspect: rebounding. The Aggies outrebounded them, 45-33.

Morgan said his players knew what they had to do.

“Offensive rebounding was something we stressed all week,” Morgan said.

Well, what happened?

“I don’t know,” Morgan said. “Ask the players.”

Said Titus: “They just wanted it more than we did.”