Rebels Put 49ers in Twilight Zone : College basketball: Long Beach is unable to break through defense in 96-77 loss to UNLV.

Nevada Las Vegas Coach Jerry Tarkanian doesn’t like it and neither does Cal State Long Beach Coach Seth Greenberg. But the bottom line is the Rebels’ 1-2-2 zone defense works.

Long Beach found out firsthand Sunday, losing to the Rebels, 96-77, before 5,340 at the Long Beach Arena.

“The 1-2-2 zone has changed our season,” Tarkanian said. “I don’t like it, but we have to practice it. Without it, we wouldn’t be talking 20 wins.”

Since 1973, Las Vegas has played man-to-man defense. But the Rebels (20-2) switched to the 1-2-2 midway through their second Big West Conference game in January when they trailed UC Irvine to open the second half. The Rebels went on to win that game by 14 points and are 12-0 against conference opponents.

“We just had trouble guarding people early in the year,” Tarkanian said of his collection of players, none of whom saw much action on last year’s 30-1 Final Four team.

After opening in a 2-3 zone, which allowed Long Beach to jump to an 8-2 lead, the Rebels switched to the 1-2-2 and quickly grabbed a 23-12 lead after 10 minutes.

Long Beach made only eight field goals in the first half, primarily on long-range jump shots. Center Chris Tower, who scored a personal-best 23 points in a victory Thursday over New Mexico State, managed only two points in the first half and 14 overall. He was one for five from close range against Las Vegas center Elmore Spencer in the first half.

Long Beach forward Lucious Harris, who averaged 19 points a game, finished with 16, but he didn’t make his first field goal until 5 1/2 minutes were gone in the second half.

Forward Bryon Russell led Long Beach with 21 points and nine rebounds.

Greenberg, the second-year 49er coach who likes man-to-man defense, claimed that his team made the 1-2-2 Rebel zone look better than it was.

“If I knew before the game that we were going to get those kind of shots, I would have said it would be a different game,” he said. Long Beach was 23 for 57 from the field.

Led by guard J.R. Rider, who scored 32 points to take over the Big West scoring lead from UC Santa Barbara’s Lucius Davis, the Rebels consistently got easy shots.

The victory was especially gratifying to Tarkanian, who coached at Cal State Long Beach from 1968-73 and went 121-20 here. Surrounded by some of his former Long Beach players, Tarkanian acknowledged that he used the 1-2-2 in each of his five seasons here.

“All year I was searching in my mind, because our defense really hurt us in our early games,” he said of his current team. “We couldn’t stop anyone.”