Long Beach Stays Close--for a Half

Cal State Long Beach tried to sneak into the desert and steal away with an upset Friday night. Arizona wouldn’t allow it.

Showing Long Beach how good a Top 10 team is, the Wildcats broke open a close game with a 61-point second half and beat the 49ers, 94-62, in a nonconference game before a sellout crowd at McKale Center.

Sean Elliott scored 23 points to lead the undefeated Wildcats, ranked seventh and ninth in the wire service polls, to their fourth straight victory.

But the 49ers, who kept the game close for a half, did win the respect of Arizona Coach Lute Olson.

“Long Beach played really hard and very effectively,” said Olson, who coached at Long Beach in the mid-1970s.

“Their coaching staff has done a great job getting those kids to give that kind of commitment. In the first half, they got whatever they wanted.”

Arizona, which returned home after beating Michigan and Syracuse in the Great Alaska Shootout, received a roaring welcome from 13,217 fans.

But the Wildcats didn’t exactly pick up where they left off in Anchorage. They missed their first four shots and found themselves behind, 8-3.

The 49ers, with center John Hatten scoring 12 of his 16 points, continued to give the Wildcats more than they had expected throughout the rest of the first half.

The score was tied six times, the last at 23-23 with 3:39 left. But then Elliott and Tom Tolbert took over, each scoring twice as the Wildcats went on a spurt that gave them a 33-27 halftime lead.

At that point, it seemed unlikely that Arizona would get near its 97 points-a-game average.

But they found a way.

In the locker room, Olson told his players to get the ball inside more consistently. And they did. The Wildcats made 9 of 10 layups in the second half.

“They asserted themselves and wore us down inside,” said 49er Coach Joe Harrington, whose team is 1-1.

Tolbert, Arizona’s 247-pound center, scored 18 points, but the most dominant Wildcat inside was Anthony Cook, who had 12 rebounds and 3 blocked shots to go with 15 points.

“The just pulled together and showed they are a great team,” said 49er guard Morlon Wiley, who scored 16 points and had 4 steals.

“I thought we handled the crowd pretty well at times,” Wiley said, “but it was the crowd that got them going.”

Elliott stirred things up in the second half. In one surge, when Arizona increased a 47-35 lead to 56-37, the flashy forward contributed with rebounds, length-of-the court drives, a blocked shot and some perfect passes.

One of the passes resulted in a Cook dunk that really turned on the crowd.

The 49ers, with Wiley hitting two three-point shots, did cut a 20-point lead to 69-54 but then were buried, 35-8, the rest of the way.

“We lost it offensively,” Harrington said. “We started taking bad shots and compounded that by playing poor half-court defense.

Arizona’s defense, meanwhile, made the 49ers lose their composure.

What impressed Harrington about Arizona, he said, was its pass-oriented style of play.

“They deserve the ranking they have,” Harrington said.

The 49ers had no regrets about accepting Arizona’s invitation to fill a date on its schedule--and not just because they came away with $20,000.

“This game’s going to help us, believe it or not,’ Harrington said.