Long Beach Wins Respect, Not Game : 49ers: Knight lavishes praise after Hoosiers are 92-75 winners for 16th consecutive championship of their own tournament.

Cal State Long Beach didn’t win the Indiana tournament Saturday night--no team but Indiana ever does--but the 49ers won praise from Bob Knight.

“I thought they were far and away the closest to what we’ll be playing in the Big Ten,” the Indiana coach said after the 14th-ranked Hoosiers (6-0) beat Long Beach, 92-75, to win their tournament for the 16th consecutive year.

In a game in which the final score was misleading, the 49ers trailed only 83-75 and had the ball with 3:18 to play. But Mike Masucci missed a wide-open jump shot from 16 feet, and the Hoosiers ran off nine points in a row.

Indiana won the game in the first five minutes of the second half when it outscored the 49ers, 17-5, to extend a 40-35 halftime lead.

“We were up 17 and then managed to find a way to make it exciting, not to take anything away from Long Beach,” Knight said. “We aren’t really as smart a team as we have to be.”

Knight took exception to a suggestion that the reason is because he has a team with four freshman starters.

“Young team, old team . . . what the hell difference does it make? You’ve got to think to play.”

The 49ers are 4-1.

“We played unintimidated, hard and aggressive basketball,” Long Beach Coach Joe Harrington. “We didn’t come out and play afraid of Indiana.”

The 49er full-court press worked well, forcing 19 Indiana turnovers.

“We can’t ask any more out of our press than what we got tonight,” Harrington said.

But Long Beach offered only token defense inside, where Indiana scored most of its points. As a result, the Hoosiers’ field goal shooting percentage was 62.9%. Long Beach shot only 42.9%

“Indiana worked hard the last five or six minutes to get it inside,” Harrington said. “That’s where we broke down. They’ve got a good front of young players.”

The big inside scorer was 6-9 sophomore center Eric Anderson, who made 11 of 15 field goal attempts--most of them dunks and layups--and scored 26 points. He was named the tournament’s most valuable player.

Anderson had plenty of help from 6-8 freshman forward Lawrence Funderburke, who, like Anderson, had 26 points and eight rebounds.

Funderburke came off the bench in the first half to spark a Hoosier run that brought the Assembly Hall crowd of 14,876 into the game.

The 49ers were led by guard Tyrone Mitchell, who scored 15 points and impressed Knight.

“I like Mitchell,” Knight said. “We haven’t played against anyone any tougher. He’ll try to find a way to beat you.”

Center Kevin Cutler had 13 points for the 49ers and a game-high 11 rebounds.

Long Beach was able to stay close most of the first half, despite foul trouble and poor shooting. The 49ers committed nine fouls in the first seven minutes and made only 11 of their first 27 shots.

For the game, Long Beach was called for 32 fouls and Indiana 17.

After Mitchell’s layup had cut a Hoosier lead to 9-4, defensive pressure produced steals that resulted in a jump shot by Kenny Jarvis and a three-point shot by Bobby Sears.

The 49ers went ahead, 11-9, but the lead was brief. Funderburke came in and hit a bank shot driving down the lane, a dunk after a baseline drive and a turnaround jump shot. That flurry took only 1:19 and put the Hoosiers ahead to stay, 17-13.

Indiana continued to hurt the 49ers inside, with Anderson also hitting three consecutive shots to increase the lead to 25-17.

The Hoosiers, though, kept making errors against the press, giving Long Beach chances it failed to capitalize on. The 49ers faced their biggest deficit, 40-31, after Jarvis slipped and lost the ball after making a steal. The ball was picked up under the basket by Matt Nover, who scored easily.

The 49ers closed to within five points at the end of the half on a jump shot by Harris and a drive by Mitchell.

But the press lost its effectiveness at the start of the second half as Anderson, Funderburke and Calbert Cheaney did all the scoring in the 17-5 surge.

“The difference was us getting offense off their press at the start of the second half,” Knight said. “We couldn’t have asked for a better way to start.”