Long Beach Doesn’t Mind Splitting a Few Seconds

Three days after losing to a team that shot 27%, Long Beach State was trailing a bunch of short guys from St. Mary’s by two points late in the first half.

About as late as a team can push it.

Nineteen minutes and 59.4 seconds already had been played.

49er point guard Rasul Salahuddin had the ball out of bounds, just inside the halfcourt stripe, and 0.6 of a second to make something happen--but what, exactly, was not immediately clear.

Inbound the ball quickly and beat the rush to the locker room water cooler?

Then, Salahuddin noticed St. Mary’s “had a 5-10 guy on Hawk [6-7 Long Beach forward Juaquin Hawkins].” This is not as peculiar as it initially sounds--the Gaels have so many little people, they have to put them somewhere.

So Kamran Sufi, formerly of Mater Dei, currently a couple inches shy of six feet, was assigned to Hawkins and Salahuddin made sure he got a good look at the highlight thus far of the 1995-96 49er basketball season--a perfectly placed pass that Hawkins snared above the rim and rammed through the hoop as the buzzer sounded.

Tie game.

Home crowd on its feet, roaring.

Long Beach on its way to a 52-point second half and a 17-point victory.

Amazing what can be accomplished in sixth-tenths of seconds.

“That play,” Long Beach Coach Seth Greenberg said, “made us feel good going into halftime--suddenly, we’re tied--but emotionally, it also took the wind out of them.

“They played their butts off, they probably outplayed us in the first half, and all of a sudden. . . . BAM!”

Salahuddin was still beaming over it after his postgame shower.

“It can’t get no better than that,” Salahuddin said with a laugh. “Hawk made a great play--and the pass was as good as the basket.”

The two spend a good deal of time in practice--several seconds, in fact--working on the last-gasp play.

“I can basically put it there eight times out of 10,” Salahuddin boasted.

And Hawkins? How many of those lobs does he convert?

“Eight,” Salahuddin said firmly. “He’ll put it down every time.”

So, does this handy little play, with a practice success rate of 80%, have a name?

Salahuddin was about to give it away when 49er guard James Cotton abruptly interrupted.

“Don’t tell ‘em,” Cotton blurted. “We still have to play Irvine. We still have to play Fullerton.”

Apparently, bugging opposition huddles with secret microphones is a new strategy in the Big West Conference this season.

“Red,” Greenberg finally fessed up. “We call it ‘Red.’ It’s a good play, but the play was nothing compared to the pass and catch you saw tonight. Credit has to go to Rasul for that. His recognition made it happen.”

The pass was Salahuddin’s only assist of the first half and one of just three for the game. But the 6-3 senior is a rookie point guard, breaking into the position and spending his first three collegiate seasons as a shooting guard. The transition is going to take a while, Greenberg readily concedes.

Moments such Tuesday night’s pinpoint special, however, add hours, even days, to a coach’s patience.

“Obviously,” Greenberg said, “the move is not easy for him. Rasul is a natural No. 2 guard. He’s a natural scoring guard. He doesn’t have a point guard’s mentality in terms of distributing the ball yet. He still has a scorer’s mentality.

“Sure, I’d like to have a guy who can drive and kick it out [to an open shooter] . . . But Rasul is the personality of our team. If he plays well, we play with passion. He leads with his enthusiasm. James [Cotton] is kind of a quiet leader. Rasul, he’s a cartoon character.”

Tuesday night, Salahuddin pumped up a 49er team that could have, and should have, been flat after last Saturday’s 69-62 overtime loss to Miami of Ohio--one of the few box scores you’ll ever see where the winning team shoots 27% from the field.

Against St. Mary’s, Long Beach shot 61.9% from the field--81.3% in the second half--with Salahuddin showing the way, sinking seven of nine field goal tries for 21 points. His trio of three-pointers early in the second half helped the 49ers keep pace with St. Mary’s tiny catapult, David Sivulich, who launched 15 three-point attempts and converted eight of them.

“That guy has unlimited range,” Salahuddin said, shaking his head. “We tried to come out on him, but we couldn’t get that far out.”

So, Long Beach countered a trey for trey, got the ball to Cotton (25 points), got the ball to enough open 49ers that five ended the game in double figures and coasted to their fourth victory in seven games.

“This was a big game for us,” Greenberg said. “St. Mary’s beat San Jose and UOP, they’re tough. They play very hard. They’ve got a little ‘nasty.’ ”

Salahuddin found a way to take it out of them, and it didn’t take a lot. Barely half a second.