Poor Rebounding Costs the Titans Dearly : College basketball: Cal State Fullerton is beaten on the boards by San Jose State, giving Spartans a 69-63 victory.

Cal State Fullerton basketball Coach Brad Holland frowned as he looked at the stat sheet after the Titans’ 69-63 Big West Conference loss to San Jose State Thursday night at Titan Gym.

He wasn’t looking at the score but the rebounding.

San Jose State, the worst rebounding team in the conference, outrebounded Fullerton, 42-27, including 15-6 on the offensive boards.

“Look at that,” Holland said. “You tell me if rebounding was the difference in the game or not. We shot 43%, they shot 39%. We had only 10 turnovers. We just didn’t rebound.”

San Jose State crashed the boards, and the Titans’ hopes for a second consecutive victory came crashing down.

It was a career rebounding night for any Spartan who could reach over his head. Terry Cannon, a 5-11 guard and San Jose State’s leading scorer, had a career-high eight rebounds to go with his team-high 16 points. Guard Lossie Mitchel and forward Darren Greene each had seven rebounds.

Center David Frigout led Fullerton with six rebounds, but no other Titan had more than four.

“A blind person would know we were outrebounded tonight,” said Titan guard Greg Vernon, who finished with 11 points and three rebounds. “We were just killed on the boards. That’s basically it.”

That was it for the Titans, who dropped to 3-11 overall and even deeper in the conference cellar at 1-5. San Jose State (7-7, 3-3) matched its victory total of last year, when it went 7-20, and won at Titan Gym for the first time since 1984.

The Spartans got off to an awful start, missing their first 12 shots and failing to score until Andrew Gardiner hit a free throw with 14 minutes 59 seconds left in the first half.

Fullerton didn’t fare any better, turning over the ball three times early and failing to reach double figures in points until Fred Amos’ dunk with 8:48 left gave the Titans an 11-8 lead.

Despite San Jose State’s poor shooting, Fullerton still couldn’t pull away. The Titans led, 13-10, with 6:24 left in the half, but Cannon hit three three-point shots to spark a 15-5 Spartan run to close the half.

Part of Fullerton’s first-half troubles was because of the absence of leading scorer Winston Peterson, who picked up his third foul less than 7:30 into the game and scored only five points in 10 minutes of play by the half.

Fullerton trailed, 25-18, at the half, narrowly missing their season-low of 17 points in the first half of last week’s loss to Utah State.

San Jose State built its lead to 11 points, 34-23, with 15:39 left in the second half. But Peterson, who stayed out of foul trouble in the second half and finished with a game-high 23 points brought the Titans back with some help from freshman guard Chris St. Clair.

St. Clair scored five points and Peterson eight to pull the Titans to within one, 39-38, with nine minutes left. And forward Darren Little scored seven of his 16 points in the next five minutes to keep the Titans close.

A three-pointer by Little with 4:05 left cut San Jose State’s lead to three, 51-48, but the Spartans’ Jason Allen answered with a three-pointer to spark an 8-1 San Jose run in the next 2:40 to pull away.