Long Beach Women Roll Over Ohio State and On to Final Four

Another group of Midwesterners found it couldn’t handle the pace in Southern California Saturday night.

It was the Ohio State women’s basketball team, which couldn’t keep up with Cal State Long Beach in the final game of the NCAA West Regional at Pauley Pavilion.

Long Beach ran away from the Buckeyes, 102-82, getting 40 points from All-American and tournament MVP Cindy Brown and 26 from guard Penny Toler before an announced crowd of 2,670.

The victory moved the 49ers into the Final Four next weekend at Austin, Tex., where they will meet Tennessee in one of the semifinals on Friday.

Tennessee upset second-ranked Auburn, 77-61, in the Mideast Regional final Saturday at Knoxville, Tenn.

In advancing out of the West, Long Beach exorcised some demons.

The West Regional final had become something of a personal bugaboo for Long Beach Coach Joan Bonvicini, whose teams had lost in the regional final three times in the last four years, falling one win short of the Final Four each time.

“This win is not only for this team, but for all the other teams we’ve had that came so close,” Bonvicini said. “We’d been knocking on the door, but this year, we knocked it down.”

The difference between this season’s team and her previous teams?

“To be honest with you,” Bonvicini said, “we expected to make it this year.”

The 49ers’ confidence level was raised, no doubt, by their ranking as the nation’s highest-scoring team.

Long Beach (33-2) averages almost 97 points a game and, by ringing up a regional-record point total against Ohio State, the 49ers surpassed the 100-point mark for the 15th time this season, improving their own NCAA record.

After they ran over Mississippi, 94-55, Thursday night, Ole Miss Coach Von Chancellor said their fast break was like the freeway, “four lanes just constantly coming at you.”

Saturday, they ran over Ohio State.

Against the 49ers’ pressure, the Buckeyes (26-5) committed 26 turnovers. Long Beach had 15 steals, including 5 each by Brown and Toler.

“I think Cindy Brown and Penny Toler controlled too many things out there,” Ohio State Coach Nancy Darsch said.

Bonvicini has said that her team is not one-dimensional, that it can do more than just run.

The 49ers showed a certain versatility against Ohio State, continually feeding a posted-up Brown inside whenever the break wasn’t available.

Brown, a senior forward, responded by making 15 of 26 shots and 10 of 12 free throws. She also had 10 rebounds and 5 assists.

“I think they executed a lot of things well,” Ohio State’s Tracey Hall said. “They saw what they could do and they did it. They saw that Brown was open and they went to her.”

Brown scored eight points as Long Beach jumped out to a 12-4 lead and never looked back.

Ohio State made a few runs at the 49ers, cutting its deficit to 34-30 with 3:03 left in the first half, but Long Beach kept coming up with the key plays to hold off the Big Ten co-champions.

“It was like we took two steps forward and one step back,” Darsch said. “We could never get those three steps going in the same direction.

“They really took advantage of every miscue on our part.”

Tournament Notes

Ohio State, which ranked third in the nation in field-goal accuracy at 52.9%, shot 46.1% against Long Beach. Long Beach shot 54.9% . . . Ohio State All-American Tracey Hall, a two-time Big Ten player of the year, made only 10 of 30 shots but led the Buckeyes with 26 points, 14 rebounds and 5 assists. . . . Joining Hall on the all-tournament team were Monica Lamb of USC, Penny Toler, Margaret Mohr and Cindy Brown of Long Beach. . . . In the other semifinal next Friday, No. 1-ranked Texas will meet Louisiana Tech.