The Best Are Often the Pits : College basketball: Long Beach, Fullerton, San Diego and even USC have had success with their small, confusing, loud gymnasiums.

They look like high school gyms and are laughingly called cracker boxes, pits and dinosaurs. Even so, big-time college basketball is played in them.

These cozy homes of a few Division I universities in Southern California exude a musty charm not found in gleaming arenas. They provide a loud, intimidating home-court advantage, with fans sitting so close to the floor that when they get up to go for a hot dog, they might bump into a referee or catch an outlet pass.

When Cal State Long Beach forward Kevin Cutler disappeared into the crowd after driving for a layup in 2,000-seat University Gym, the public-address announcer routinely requested, “Please return all players to the court.”

The gyms can be exasperating as well as amusing.

At Long Beach, an ancient 45-second clock that had been taped above the backboard fell during a practice session. Luckily, no one was hurt. And free throws would sometimes bounce up off the rim and hit a wire used for raising and lowering the backboard. That wire is now out of the way.

Just the sight of University Gym makes Coach Joe Harrington cringe, though.

“It is embarrassing to have a game on national TV from there,” he said. “It’s laughable. They laugh at us back east. Any reputable team is not going to play in that gymnasium.”

The court, with its maze of brown, orange, red, green and white lines, resembles one that might be found in an old YMCA. The lines mark not only the basketball court but courts for volleyball, tennis and badminton. There are, however, no markings for girls’ hopscotch, as TV sportscaster Keith Olbermann surmised.

“There were millions of lines. . . . You didn’t know if you were going to a shuffleboard contest or a volleyball game,” said Vivian Stringer, women’s basketball coach at the University of Iowa, who brought her team to the Long Beach gym for the NCAA Western Regional two years ago.

“I thought we were walking through that gym to go to the main facility,” Stringer said. “I was shocked. I thought it set back women’s basketball 20 years. I remember it being extremely hot, to the point where the walls were sweating. When I tried to talk to my team, I had (spectators’) knees in my back. People were jammed in like sardines.”

Cal State Fullerton’s Titan Gym has twice the seating capacity of the Long Beach gym, but is plagued with as many lines.

Said Norm Borucki, a Big West Conference referee: “All the lines do make it more confusing. We really have to concentrate. And if the crowd is too close to the court, we can’t get our proper depth perception. Or we might trip over someone’s foot.”

The 2,500-seat University of San Diego Sports Center has extra lines for a volleyball court. It has padded walls 10 feet beyond the ends of the basketball court and a low ceiling that, when struck by a ball, emits a white spray of acoustical material.

But what distinguishes it the most are the priests who live in one of its wings.

“It’s the dinosaur on campus,” said John Cunningham, the USD baseball coach who was an assistant to basketball Coach Phil Wolpert in 1962 when the building was being completed.

The center wasn’t even designed as a basketball facility.

“At first, the floor was ceramic tile and there were four 100-watt light bulbs,” Cunningham recalled. “There were no provisions for baskets and there were no bleachers.”

And the shower facilities, eventually replaced in the 1970s, had been designed for seminarians. The cubicles contained a shower, drying area and dressing room and were separated by curtains and high walls.

The Toreros have long been fond of jumping on teams who seem stunned at being in the little gym after having just enjoyed Sea World.

“It’s so loud when it’s full, you can’t hear the P.A. system,” Cunningham said.

But San Diego is only 9-5 in the center this season.

“It hasn’t been as good for us as it was two years ago when we had a good team,” said Coach Hank Egan. “The best home-court advantage is having a good team.”

Some visiting players feel at home at USD. Bo Kimble of Loyola Marymount, after playing there before a packed crowd, said it reminded him of high school days.

A charged atmosphere seems to permeate the cracker boxes.

“Fans enjoy basketball because they can see the emotion,” said Seth Greenberg, assistant coach at Long Beach. “In a gym, that becomes paramount. You can’t duplicate that atmosphere in a large arena unless you have 13,000 people packed in.”

Harrington calls the Long Beach gym the worst home court--and the best. Though dismayed by the image the gym projects, he likes the noise level and figures the lines are worth four or five points a game to the 49ers. They were 24-6 there the last three seasons.

The advantage of playing in a home pit was evident last month to USC Coach George Raveling when the Trojans, forced out of the Sports Arena by an ice show, defeated Arizona State in the campus Lyon Center.

The new building, which is used mainly for student recreation, was jammed with 2,000 fans. Raveling raved about the noise and said he wouldn’t mind playing all of his home games there.

Fullerton’s gym has received its share of notoriety, too.

The first row of the bleachers sits almost on the sideline of the court, allowing fans to accept high-fives from the Titans during pregame introductions.

Longtime Fullerton fan Bill Harvey sat in the first row two years ago, taunting Brown University players. Eventually, Brown Coach Mike Cingiser walked around to the other side of the court and scuffled with Harvey.

“He was nose to nose with our kids,” Cingiser said.

In the summer of 1988, when John Thompson brought his Olympic team to Fullerton for a game against Athletes in Action, he complained about the heat in the building and requested that a fan be placed by the bench.

“It was like a sauna,” said Michael Wilbon, a reporter with the Washington Post. “It was like Boston Garden is in May for the playoffs.”

Titan Gym is dim as well as hot, unacceptable for still photography without strobe lights.

When New Mexico State Coach Neil McCarthy walked into it recently, he asked an employee, “When are you going to turn on the rest of the lights?”

The gyms do not necessarily hamper recruiting, though.

“People make the program,” Harrington said, but he thinks he would have a better chance of getting top players if the 49ers played more home games in the 12,000-seat Long Beach Arena. They can’t play more than about three a season there because of a $10,000 rental and the lack of available dates.

Sneed, who objects to Titan Gym being called small, said, “I don’t think a kid, especially a transfer who may have already played in a big home arena, chooses a school because of the facility. It’s probably a low priority. They choose a school because of the people, the coaches and the educational opportunities.”

A big facility matters to center Mike Masucci, who nonetheless transferred to Long Beach two years ago from the University of Kansas, which plays in a 15,000-seat field house.

“I can’t stand playing here,” Masucci said of the 49er gym. “It’s like high school. It’s a lot more fun playing in a big arena. Maybe that’s why I’m playing better on the road this year.”

The cracker boxes at San Diego and Long Beach may eventually give way to medium-sized arenas, but they are only in the planning stages.

And an expansion in the next couple of years is planned for Titan Gym, which would increase seating capacity to 5,000.

“Once we do that, maybe we’ll change the name from Titan Gym to Titan Arena,” Fullerton Athletic Director Ed Carroll said.

And Sneed said they will probably even take off some of the lines.