The New 49ers : Cal State Long Beach Basketball Team to Host Purdue in Game That Could Earn Them National Attention

The Cal State Long Beach men’s basketball team will have a chance to gain national attention when it plays Purdue at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Long Beach Arena. It will be the first major test for the 49ers’ many promising new players.

The game looms as perhaps the biggest for Long Beach outside its conference since the 1970s. The 49ers will be attired for the occasion in new “neon gold” uniforms that Coach Joe Harrington said are unique among college teams. “They go with our California style and pressing defense,” he said.

Last Saturday, the 49ers opened the basketball season with a 105-61 victory, tempered somewhat because Stephen F. Austin University of Nacogdoches, Tex., offered little competition. Seven newcomers, all with the size, speed and athletic talent that Harrington has sought since his arrival in 1987, made impressive debuts.

And this week, for the first time in a decade, the 49ers were among “other” teams that received votes in the UPI coaches Top 20 poll.

“Another step forward,” Harrington said. “A little one. We’re not a Top 20 team yet.”

“I voted them in the Top 20,” Purdue Coach Gene Keady said by telephone from West Lafayette, Ind. “We know they have great athletes.”

Purdue won its opener last week, 57-43, over Ball State.

Despite the attraction--the Big 10 Boilermakers are 194-85 in Keady’s nine seasons--Saturday’s game is not likely to be played before a huge crowd. Even when the 49ers were consistent winners in the 1970s, they drew more than 10,000 only twice to the Long Beach Arena. The largest recent crowd was 8,663 for a game with Nevada Las Vegas two seasons ago when Harrington first sparked interest in a 49ers basketball revival and led the team to the National Invitation Tournament.

“If we get 6,000 or 7,000 we’ll be ecstatic,” said Seth Greenberg, associate head coach.

More realistically, a few thousand fans should show up, curious to see how good the 49ers really are.

“I don’t know how good we’re going to be,” Harrington said. “That’s why I’m anxious to play this game. (Purdue) plays aggressive, mean basketball.”

Harrington, who is 31-27 at Long Beach, won’t be satisfied with the usual fight for second place behind Las Vegas, which has won the Big West Conference seven consecutive seasons.

“First place in the league and make the NCAA playoffs . . . that’s the commitment these guys have made,” Harrington said last week as he watched his players eat lunch in a restaurant near the campus.

All the players, except Rudy Harvey, a holdover from when Ron Palmer was coach, were recruited by Harrington and his staff. “We’ve worked three years to get to this point,” he said. “I know that physically we can play with just about anybody in the country. This is the first time since I’ve been here that we’re able to do that.”

The 49ers have nine newcomers. “The big factor is just learning to play together as a team,” Harrington said. “We’re 10 deep; that’s an unbelievable number of combinations.”

Long Beach recruited depth because its system of pressing defense and fast-break offense requires a demanding pace. Last season, when the 49ers were 13-15, they lacked depth and were unable to sustain a full-court pressing defense an entire game.

The 49ers are a collection of transfers, Proposition 48 cases, redshirts and veterans. “We’ve got a lot of guys who not only haven’t played at Long Beach, they haven’t played at all in two years,” Harrington noted.

Four starters are new: 6-8 junior center Kevin Cutler, a former All-American at Arizona Western College who scored 16 points against Stephen F. Austin; 6-8 sophomore forward Frankie Edwards, a one-time Millikan High School player who sat out last year because he failed to meet the minimum academic requirements of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s Proposition 48; 6-5 forward Troy Joseph, who played two seasons at Fullerton College and was discovered by Harrington last year at a three-on-three playground tournament, and 6-5 guard Lucious Harris, a freshman from Cleveland High in Reseda who made six of 10 shots, scored 15 points and grabbed six rebounds Saturday night.

They join 6-4 senior point guard Tyrone Mitchell, who averaged 10 points, five rebounds and five assists last season.

The other new players are Ronnie Winbush, a 6-8 guard-forward from Crenshaw High in Los Angeles who sat out last season under Proposition 48; Kenny Jarvis, a 6-5 junior guard from Millikan High and College of Southern Idaho; 6-11 center Mike Masucci, a sophomore who played on the 1988 University of Kansas national championship team and was redshirted last season; Kevin Williams, a 6-8 junior forward who played at the University of Cincinnati and Arizona Western College; and Adam Henderson, a 6-11 freshman from Los Angeles High.

Returning from last year’s team are 6-5 senior forward Rudy Harvey, 6-1 guard Darrell Faulkner, 6-4 guard Brian Jones and 6-2 guard Bobby Sears, who had nine assists against Stephen F. Austin.

It seems apparent that no one will be on the court for more than 30 minutes. So far, Harrington has detected no complaints from the players.

“This looks like an unselfish team,” he said. “It looks like we have good chemistry. I like this whole group. As the coach, I don’t have to like the players, but I happen to like these guys.”

The 49ers lost last season at Purdue, 100-53. Only four current players--Harvey, Faulkner, Jones and Sears--played in the game.

“In overall performance, that was the low point in our period here,” Greenberg said. “We’ll see what kind of progress we’ve made Saturday. We’ll be out of control sometimes, but we’ll be exciting.”