CS Long Beach Blankets Bowen, Topples Titans : College basketball: No. 25 49ers roll to 72-58 Big West victory. Fullerton standout is held to only 10 points.

Seconds became minutes and minutes became memories. As Cal State Fullerton struggled to keep pace with No. 25 Cal State Long Beach on Thursday night, the Titans couldn’t help but remember . . .

Once, Bruce Bowen’s jumpshot was as sure as the sunrise. With a flick of his wrist, from straightaway and from impossible angles, the ball would flutter through the air and drop softly through the twine.

But for one night, one awful, mysterious, where-did-this-come-from evening, there were a couple of problems. And the Titans were beached as a result, 72-58.

Bowen found it nearly impossible to shake free for a shot for the first 20 minutes. And when he did get one off in the second half, the shots were usually either rushed or off-target.

The man who had scored 25 or more points in four of the previous seven games for Fullerton (8-5, 3-3 in the Big West) managed only 10 in front of a sellout crowd of 1,987 in The Gold Mine.

Blame for this one wasn’t standing alone with Bowen, though.

Point guard Aaron Sunderland, who had only eight turnovers in his past three games, had six against the 49ers. Center Sean Williams, who struck like a snake with several quick jump-hooks en route to 13 first-half points, had only one second-half basket. Even reserve forward Greg Vernon stumbled, having made 20 of 21 free throws for the year entering Thursday before bricking two in the second half.

By the end of it, voices were soft and eyes were glazed.

“I can’t tell you why,” Bowen said. “I just have to say this has been one of my worst games here. There were times where I wasn’t aggressive.

“I put a lot of this loss on me because of the way I played. I didn’t help anybody out.”

He refused to blame it on events of the past week, which hasn’t exactly been part of the college experience Bowen anticipated. He was attacked after Fullerton’s victory over UC Irvine on Saturday by an overzealous Anteater, kicked in the head and nearly broke his nose.

It turned out to be badly bruised. But the swelling in the nose and the bumps on his head were gone by Thursday, and Bowen insisted any emotional wounds had healed as well.

“(The fight) had nothing to do with it,” Bowen said firmly. “That fight was after the game. That had nothing to do with tonight.”

Said Fullerton Coach Brad Holland: “I asked Bruce if he was ready to play and he said he was.”

Bowen also discounted any jitters from facing Lucious Harris, the Big West’s leading scorer and a high school teammate of Bowen’s for a brief spell in Bowen’s junior year.

Bowen guarded Harris most of the night and held Harris to 14 points, 11 below his average.

But when the Titans had the ball, Bowen was hounded by Brian Camper and dogged by a sluggishness he couldn’t shake.

“More important than defensing Bruce is keeping him off the glass,” said Seth Greenberg, Cal State Long Beach coach. “Brian wasn’t responsible for rebounding the ball tonight--he was responsible for making sure that Bruce didn’t rebound the ball.

“That was it. Keep him off the glass.”

And coming off of a loss at UC Santa Barbara on Monday, the 49ers (13-2, 6-2) were in the mood to listen.

“For sure,” said Long Beach guard Jeff Rogers, who had three steals. “A lot of people took the Santa Barbara game personally.

“We weren’t going to lose tonight.”

Bowen managed to get off only three shots in the first half. He didn’t get his first bucket until 13:46 was left in the game, with the Titans down 10 and the game slipping away.

The Titans had trailed at halftime by only four, 32-28, but were outrebounded in the second half, 20-10. And crushing blows were delivered nearly midway through the second half, when Camper, Chris Tower and Bryon Russell all dunked within about a three-minute span, increasing the 49ers’ lead to 12 and affixing an exclamation point to the evening.

Tower finished with a game-high 24 points.

“That wasn’t our team out there,” Holland said. “I don’t know where our team went.”

It isn’t easy to disappear in The Gold Mine, what with the crowd packed tightly up against the sidelines and the noise threatening to blow the air right out of the basketball and the heat ready to melt the cramped gym to the ground.

But somehow, Fullerton came up as flat as a compact disc while Long Beach won its 20th in a row in the campus gym.

“This was probably our poorest effort of the year,” Holland said.

He shook his head.

“There is no explanation,” he continued. “I don’t understand where the team went. Sometimes it happens. You hate to see it happen, and you can’t explain why. Mentally, physically, we weren’t ready to play.”

On this night, there wasn’t much else to say.