Even With Harris Out, Long Beach Holds Off Irvine, 88-74

Lucious Harris had been “magnificent,” in the words of Cal State Long Beach Coach Seth Greenberg.

But seven minutes into the second half, Harris sat on the bench with four fouls to go along with his 26 points.

Inside two minutes, UC Irvine, once down by 17 points, had cut the lead to only five.

Opportunity was knocking, but for the umpteenth time this season, Irvine didn’t manage to get to the door. Instead, Long Beach sprinted to an 88-74 Big West Conference victory in front of 3,401 Saturday in the Bren Center.

“What won the game was our ability to play without Lucious,” said Greenberg, whose team played what some players considered its best game since last month’s upset of Kansas. Harris, who entered the game needing 34 points to become the leading scorer in Big West history, had 23 by halftime, but finished with 26. He returned in the final minutes of the game but didn’t score again.

Long Beach (17-7, 9-6) handed the Anteaters their 15th loss of the season by deciding to run and then doing it.

“The problem with the game was we were not able to make it a half-court game,” said Irvine Coach Rod Baker, whose team is 5-15, 3-10.

“They were able to keep the game a full-court game. They killed us in transition.”

Still, there was an opening. Irvine bit into the 49ers’ 15-point halftime lead with a 9-0 run near the start of the second half. It was fast and effective, fueled by Keith Stewart’s steal and layup, Lloyd Mumford’s finger-roll layup and a behind-the-back bounce pass from Dee Boyer to Jeff Von Lutzow.

That got the task back to manageable size. A little later, the 49ers’ lead was 58-53 with 11 minutes left in the game, Harris was on the bench and Long Beach had only one field goal up to that point in the second half.

But Rod Hannibal ended a long possession against the Anteaters’ zone by hitting a three-pointer with the shot clock under 10, making the lead eight.

On the other end, 49er guard Jeff Rogers darted into a passing lane to steal a pass meant for Zuri Williams, and Brian Camper made the lead 10 with a layup on the end of the fast break.

“Hannibal buries a three, we throw the ball away, it goes from five to 10 and it’s gone,” Baker said.

Camper’s three-point play when he was fouled by Craig Marshall after taking a fast-break pass from Hannibal made the lead 12 with 9:36 left, and Long Beach’s lead was never single digits again.

Hannibal, Camper and Bryon Russell kept Long Beach from faltering without Harris. Hannibal scored 10 of his 13 points in the second half and finished the game with six assists. Russell added 16 points, and Camper scored all nine of his in the second half.

Irvine wanted to harness the 49ers’ running game, trying a press intended to slow the tempo. But when the game got close with Harris out, Baker faulted himself for going with a zone and a half-court game.

“Whatever opportunity we had, we gave it back by slowing the game down, which was stupid on my part,” Baker said. “I think they got tired . . . Then we let them rest. Nothing bad happened with Lucious out of the game.”

Irvine got 18 points from Von Lutzow and Mumford. Mumford, who sprained his right index finger Friday, didn’t let it affect him, making all seven field-goal attempts--mostly layups after drives through the lane.

The Anteaters were hurt by a sub-par performance from Stewart, who averages 16.2 points but scored seven Saturday on three-of-11 shooting. It was only the second time in the past 31 games he hasn’t reached double figures, but it was the second time in three games.

Stewart, who was guarding Harris, picked up his fourth foul with 16:12 left, and Baker thought Stewart was exasperated by an earlier no-call when Stewart was struck in the face on the perimeter and had to leave the game.

Stewart said he was “unsettled” by the no-call.

“I wasn’t in the flow,” he said.

The Anteaters departed shortly after the game for a red-eye flight to New York, where they play Hofstra on Monday night before returning home Tuesday and departing Wednesday for the most crucial game of the season Thursday at San Jose State. Irvine’s hopes of making the eight-team Big West tournament field appear to rest largely on beating the Spartans, who are locked in an eighth-place tie with the Anteaters.

The schedule makes for a trying week, and the opportunities for victories are running out.

Anteater Notes

Jeff Von Lutzow did not start and missed the first five minutes because he was late for the pre-game shoot-around.