BIG WEST BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT / OTHER GAMES : Long Beach Has Enough to Hold Off UC Santa Barbara

Their season hinging on the last few tense minutes, the Long Beach State 49ers made a stand Friday in the Big West Conference basketball tournament.

The 49ers repeatedly stopped UC Santa Barbara in the last crucial moments of a 67-64 victory in the quarterfinals before 8,511 at the Thomas & Mack Center.

Long Beach (18-9) plays New Mexico State (23-8) in the semifinals tonight at 5:30.

“Sometimes we play ugly on offense, but we always play pretty good defense,” Coach Seth Greenberg said. “A team has to have a personality, and I want our guys to be able to get in a stance and stop people. That’s what they did.”

Center Joe McNaull made one of two free throws with 43 seconds left to give the 49ers the lead for good. Two free throws by point guard Tye Mays sealed the outcome with 12 seconds to play.

Gaucho point guard Tecon Madden made what appeared to be a tying three-pointer with about 32 seconds left, but the officials ruled that his right foot was on the line, reducing the basket to two points and making the score 65-64.

Madden then fouled Mays, leading to the clinching free throws.

“I thought it was a three,” Santa Barbara Coach Jerry Pimm said. “I thought a three was going up on the board, and I thought the score was tied.”

Terrance O’Kelley led the 49ers with 17 points, and Rasul Salahuddin had 13 points and seven assists. McNaull bounced back after a scoreless first half to finish with 11 points and nine rebounds.

“Terrance took over the game in the first half,” Greenberg said. “And Rasul made a lot of big shots.”

Center Doug Muse, who scored 12 points, was the only Gaucho in double figures.

“We had our chances,” Pimm said. “We had the ball, down one, two points and we just didn’t quite get it done.”

After trailing, 50-39, with 15:13 remaining, UCSB got back into the game with three-point shooting.

The Gauchos kept chipping away and tied the score at 62-62 on a 15-foot jump shot in the lane by guard Lelan McDougal.

But Long Beach’s swarming man-to-man defense allowed only Madden’s basket over the final two minutes. Juaquin Hawkins, Mays and Salahuddin led the attack in those closing seconds.

“I felt real comfortable knowing that we could get the stops when we needed them,” Greenberg said. “When you’ve got guys like Hawk, Rasul and Tye, you know they’re going to play defense.”

New Mexico State 96, Nevada Las Vegas 76--The top-seeded Aggies scored 62 points in the second half to turn a three-point halftime deficit into a rout. UNLV (12-16) made only three of 23 three-point shots in the second half and shot only 35% overall for the game.

Nevada 64, Pacific 62--Nevada guard Eathan O’Bryant missed a 10-foot jumper, got his own rebound and made a three-pointer at the buzzer to lift the Wolf Pack (17-10) over the Tigers (14-13).