Fullerton Picks Up a Victory : Basketball: Titans get sloppy after taking big lead over Concordia, then hang on to win, 80-66.

Say this much for Cal State Fullerton: The inexperienced Titans will not go winless this season.

But their 80-66 decision over Irvine’s Concordia University, an NAIA school playing the first game against a Division I opponent in its 13-year basketball history, satisfied victory column requirements and not much else.

“I felt like in the first half, we played like a team,” Titan Coach Brad Holland said. “In the second half, we played like a bunch of individuals in a pick-up game.

“We lost our focus defensively and Concordia did a great job playing together, finding the open man and hitting the open shots. We didn’t handle a 20-point lead very well.”

Between the hacking, grabbing, slapping and pushing--there were 28 fouls called in the first half, 49 overall--Fullerton found time to build a 47-27 halftime lead. But rather than coast the rest of the way, the Titans went into cruise-control out of the locker room and watched Concordia cut the margin to 55-46.

However, the Eagles (4-3) managed only one basket over the next 9:25 as the Titans (1-1) switched to a zone defense and bottled up the inside.

Telephone calls by the Fullerton sports information office to every Division I conference in the nation have turned up no other teams with as little experience as two returning players and no returning starters, but Holland said the Titans’ inconsistency had nothing to do with youth.

“I blame it on players getting a little selfish in the second half,” he said. “You hate to see it happen, but it did happen. . . .

“We had way too many possessions where it was one pass or zero passes and then shoot it and then we don’t crash the boards.

“Then they come down, execute and score.

“Then we throw one pass and a shot goes up, then they get the rebound, execute and score.”

It was that monotonous, at least for the first few minutes of the second half. Concordia, thanks mainly to the sharpshooting of Vujadin Jovic (who finished with 17 points), Brian Hazelwood and Craig Martin (10 each) whittled Fullerton’s 20-point lead to 11 in a mere 2:55. Then they crawled to within nine twice--once with 15:33 to play and again with 13:57 left.

But at that point, with the score 55-46, the Titan zone squeezed the life out of the Eagles.

Of course, had Concordia not dug itself a 20-point hole in the first half, maybe the Eagles could have weathered a dry spell. But a manic Titan press, which was mostly the cause of Concordia’s 16 first-half turnovers and 26 total, rattled them badly in the early going.

“We didn’t handle the pressure well,” Concordia Coach Greg Marshall said. “Our guards didn’t handle it. Craig Martin and Pat O’Curran had seven turnovers each (actually, O’Curran was guilty of only four). If your backcourt can’t handle pressure, how can you expect the rest of the team to handle it?”

Marshall had the same complaint as Holland in the second half: Too many players who want to shoot too many times.

“We cut their 20-point lead to single digits but, before we could get a time out, we shot the ball within the first two passes four times,” Marshall said.

It was a back-to-the-drawing-board kind of game. Basically, for Fullerton, it was little more than a glorified exhibition, and the Titans were able to work on their press, different offensive sets, player rotations and various player combinations. As has been the case through the two exhibition games and the loss at Wyoming, Holland used nine players significantly.

Winston Peterson led Fullerton with 18 points, Fred Amos and Greg Vernon had 13 apiece, Danny Robinson 11 and Darren Little 10.