49ers Are Too Much for USC : Trojans Fall, 87-69, to Long Beach Women

One’s thing for sure about the Cal State Long Beach women’s basketball team: It doesn’t play favorites. Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. doormat or Final Four contender, the 49ers will rout anybody these days.

On Monday night, it was USC’s turn to discover that fact.

The 15th-ranked Trojans came into the University Gym at Long Beach and were disposed of with ease as the fifth-ranked 49ers scored an 87-69 nonconference victory before a crowd of 2,248.

Forward Cindy Brown scored a game-high 28 points and grabbed 11 rebounds for the 49ers, while guard Penny Toler contributed 24 points.

In winning its 17th straight after a season-opening loss to No. 1 Texas, Long Beach never led by less than nine points in the second half. Much of the credit for the surge that built the lead to 21 with 9:12 left in the game goes to the 49er bench, which outscored its Trojan counterparts, 23-10. Bettina Turner led the way with 13 points and 6 rebounds in 19 minutes.

“I thought we would get back into it in the second half, and we did get within nine points (with 15:39 left),” USC Coach Linda Sharp said. “But then we wouldn’t get any relief. . . . We didn’t have anyone who could come in off the bench, and so we needed the front-line players to keep getting us points and rebounds, and they didn’t have it.

“Cherie Nelson was 1 for 12 in the first half, and we have to live and die with that, and that’s been the name of the tune all season.”

Center Monica Lamb scored 18 for the Trojans before fouling out, while Nelson, who came in averaging a team-high 20.6 points, hit 7 of 23 shots from the field for 16 points and Karon Howell contributed 15. USC shot 37.7% (29 of 77).

“Right now, we’re playing with so much confidence,” Long Beach Coach Joan Bonvicini said. “When people make a run at us, we seem to show so much poise. This was real unusual because we’ve had so many good games here with USC, some overtime and triple-overtimes, one- and two-point wins.”

Monday, it was never that close.

USC (12-5) fell behind early, thanks mainly to 4-of-19 shooting from the field in the early going. It did not help matters much when Rhonda Windham committed her second foul 3 1/2 minutes into the game and was taken out, costing the Trojans the spark to their fast break.

By the time she checked back in with 7:41 left in the half, Long Beach had taken a 26-13 lead. A minute later, the 49ers, looking for their 13th straight win at home over USC, had a 15-point advantage at 30-15 en route to 46-33 halftime cushion. By that time, Windham had picked up her third foul.

Sharp put Windham on Margaret Mohr to start the game and had Howell guard the much quicker Toler, quite a chore for Howell since she had missed the entire second half of the Trojans’ 76-72 win Friday over UCLA because of a sprained right ankle and was listed as questionable for this game.

For its part, Long Beach opened in a 2-3 zone, taking advantage of its size advantage inside to collapse on Lamb, and, later in the first half, even had the 6-foot 2-inch Brown guarding the 5-5 Windham. That was not so much the 49ers playing a bit looser with the lead as a testimony to Brown’s defense.

It was her offense, however, that led the way for Long Beach, despite having two shots swatted away early in the game on great plays by Lamb. That turned out to be just the start of the dual between the two big, quick front-line standouts.