COLLEGE BASKETBALL : Titans a Point Short in Opener : Reviews Are Mixed in 70-69 Loss at Texas Tech

Reviews of Cal State Fullerton’s season opener Friday night were mixed. So were the emotions of the Titan players, who were all quite aware that their coach was back in Southern California, mourning the death of his father.

Coach George McQuarn was in Compton Friday to deliver the eulogy for his father, Luther, who died Tuesday of a heart attack at 83. The Titans, meanwhile, were in Lubbock Municipal Coliseum to play a Texas Tech team that last lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament . . . to Georgetown.

Assistant coach John Sneed ran the team in McQuarn’s absence and watched the Titans come within a basket of winning the game they had dedicated to their coach and his late father.

Guards Wendell Owens and Sean Gay combined for 38 points, and the Red Raiders held off a Fullerton rally in the closing minutes for a 70-69 nonconference victory in front of 6,308 spectators.

After trailing by 10 points with 7:36 to play, Fullerton pulled to within 68-67 on Richard Morton’s three-point basket with 50 seconds remaining, but Gay answered with a six-footer in the lane to make it 70-67 with 37 seconds left.

The Titans had their chances from that point but couldn’t convert them. Morton came up short on a three-point attempt that would have tied it with 14 seconds to play. Guard Eugene Jackson was fouled while shooting a 17-footer with five seconds left and made both free throws to make it 70-69. And that’s the way it ended.

It wasn’t quite what Sneed and the Titans had hoped for, but it was hardly cause for alarm.

“We dedicated this game to George and his father, and I think the kids wanted this game as much as any on our schedule for that reason,” Sneed said. “I have no doubt that if Coach McQuarn had been here he’d have been proud.”

Junior forward Henry Turner led the Titans with 21 points, including 6 of 7 free throws in the final seven minutes. Junior center Oval Miller had 10 points and 10 rebounds in a surprise starting role. Miller was a late replacement for senior Herman Webster, who was left out of the starting lineup for being late for the team bus to the airport on Thursday. It seems that McQuarn was at Fullerton to see his team off, and he administered the order to leave his captain out of the starting five.

Webster’s punishment lasted about three minutes. He checked into the game at the 17:19 mark of the first half. But Texas Tech’s pressure defense made things rough for him and his teammates the rest of the way. Webster, who shot nearly 60% from the field last season, was 2 of 8 from the floor against the Red Raiders. Morton was 2 of 7 in the first half and finished 7 of 17. The Titans were 24 of 56 (42.9%) on the game.

Texas Tech had no such shooting difficulties. Gay, a sophomore who helped lead the Red Raiders to the championship of the Southwest Conference Tournament last season, was 7 of 10 from the field. So was Owens, his backcourt mate. Gay also made 2 of 3 shots from three-point range.

Morton, who guarded Gay much of the game, remembered Gay from Fullerton’s 80-67 victory over Texas Tech last December in Titan Gym.

“He got into the game and made a few freshman mistakes, but I could see he had talent,” Morton said. “I knew he was a good player.”

McQuarn entered this season believing that the Titans have their share of good players, too. One of his concerns was perimeter shooting, which Friday’s opener proved was justified.

“Fullerton is an awful good team,” Texas Tech Coach Gerald Myers said. “They’re probably one of the quickest teams we’ll play all year.”

Sneed thinks the Titans have better times ahead.

“We were on the road, without one fan in the arena,” he said, “and they came back from some adversity and put themselves in a position to win the ballgame.”