Fullerton Gets the Chills in Setback : College basketball: Sneed upset after Titans shoot a season-low 32.8% from the field in 64-58 loss to UC Santa Barbara.

It was a controlled fury. Cal State Fullerton Coach John Sneed never raised his voice to display his frustration with the Titans’ 64-58 Big West Conference loss to UC Santa Barbara Thursday night, but his words made his point loud and clear.

“I’m more disappointed with this team tonight than I have been all year,” Sneed said after Fullerton shot a season-low 32.8% from the field before 1,423 in Titan Gym. “We’ve had poor shot selection the past few weeks, but we were selfish and stubborn tonight. It’s one thing to attempt to do the right thing and fail, but when you don’t even attempt the right play, it’s frustrating.”

Sneed didn’t want to get too specific, but the Titans’ flaws were obvious: Too many ill-advised outside shots. Too many one-on-one moves and shots off the dribble instead of the pass. Not enough offensive emphasis on the inside game. Inconsistent defensive effort. And not enough players on the same page.

“There were three timeouts when I told the guys to go inside, and most of the time we’d reverse the ball (and shoot) without even looking inside,” Sneed said. “That’s where the stubbornness comes in.”

Sneed was especially hard on junior point guard Aaron Sunderland, who was coming off his best game of the season, a 23-point effort against UC Irvine Saturday night. Sunderland scored 14 points but made only five of 14 shots, had only two assists--five below his average--and turned the ball over six times.

“He never got us into our offense--it was the poorest job I’ve seen of a point guard quarterbacking our offense in a long time,” Sneed said. “I’m not looking for Aaron to be that much of a scorer. Against UCI he shot a lot of free throws (nine of 13). We need a guy who’s going to quarterback the team, distribute the ball, run the break and get the ball to the right people.”

Sunderland was the only player Sneed singled out, but he wasn’t the only player to incur the coach’s wrath.

“We have to learn that offense doesn’t win games--defense does,” Sneed said. “We got that in our minds for about six minutes tonight, when we played inspired defense and the crowd got into it. We have to get that on a dozen more possessions out there.”

Sneed claimed such problems were limited to Thursday’s game, but it’s apparent they’ve been brewing for a long time and simply came to a head against Santa Barbara.

“That’s been going on since the first game,” Titan forward Bruce Bowen said of the confusion following timeouts. “He (Sneed) would diagram a play, and someone would be doing something else. There have been times late in games when someone has asked me what defense we’re in. How does your brain slip like that?”

The Titans have now lost five of their last six games to slip to 5-9, 1-4 in conference. Thursday marked the one-month anniversary of Fullerton’s best game of the season, an 86-80 loss to UCLA, but the Titans have regressed considerably since then and now appear to be coming apart at the seams.

“We have a lot of selfishness on the team--you saw that tonight,” Bowen said. “We have guys who pull up for shots at bad times and guys who won’t run the offense. They get out there and want to play pickup ball, but you can’t win that way.”

Especially against Santa Barbara’s stingy man-to-man defense, which has allowed the fewest points per game (64.5) in the conference. You beat a team like the Gauchos with good ball movement, strong picks, smart shot selection. The Titans did little of that Thursday night.

Still, amazingly, Fullerton was in the game right to the end. The Titans fell behind, 34-25, early in the second half but came back to tie it at 45 with 9:17 remaining.

The Gauchos led, 47-46, at the six-minute mark when Fullerton guard Joe Small endured what had to be his worst minute of the season.

While attempting to rebound Gaucho forward Duane Carter’s miss, Small accidentally tipped the ball into Santa Barbara’s basket. Then Small turned the ball over on a traveling violation. A few seconds later, he fouled Idris Jones, whose two free throws gave the Gauchos a 51-46 lead with 5:18 left.

Sunderland’s three-pointer and three-point play pulled Fullerton to within 55-52. The lead remained at three after a Jones jumper and two foul shots by Titan center Sean Williams.

Then Jones hit the game’s biggest basket, a three-pointer with 48 seconds left that gave Santa Barbara (11-4, 5-2) a 60-54 lead.