Long Beach State Is Put Through the Wringer

Cheerleaders heave rolled-up T-shirts into the crowd at George Mason University basketball games when a Patriot player makes a three-point shot.

Tuesday night, 11 of the 1,814 spectators in the Patriot Center went home with stocking stuffers after George Mason beat Long Beach State, 78-70.

“They were hitting them,” 49er guard James Cotton said. “They were getting open. They were doing whatever they wanted to do.”

Long Beach (3-3) ended its seven-day trip with consecutive losses, also falling at Purdue on Saturday. The 49ers committed 31 turnovers despite only occasional pressing from the Patriots (4-1), who are looking for their first winning season since 1989-90.

“You could say it’s one of those nights, but we need to handle the ball better,” said 49er center Brian Yankelevitz as he looked over a statistics sheet that showed he had six turnovers.

George Mason committed 18, 12 in the first half. The Patriots led 38-30 at the break and stretched the lead to 12 early in the second half.

Cotton, a lefty playing with a heavily bandaged right hand he hurt at Purdue, said the splint on his middle finger was no hindrance. He scored a team-high 24 points and had nine rebounds and four assists. But the point guard combination of Brandon Titus and Tommie Davis, who had averaged 22.5 points and 8.6 assists, missed 13 of 14 shots. They had 10 turnovers, seven assists and five steals.

George Mason led 68-57 with 2 minutes 50 seconds to play and sank 11 of 19 free throws to secure the victory, but the Patriots missed eight of nine foul shots at one point during that stretch.

The 49ers, who outrebounded the Patriots by 15 in the second half, could not capitalize. They pulled to within four with 44 seconds to play when Cotton followed his own miss, but the last four possessions ended with two missed shots and two turnovers.

“At the end there was a window of opportunity, but we made some mistakes that hurt us,” said Long Beach Coach Wayne Morgan, whose team plays next on Dec. 21 at Montana. “A lot of the discredit has to go to ourselves.”

George Mason senior guard Nate Langley led the Patriots with 26 points and eight steals, six in the second half. He made four three-pointers.

Guard Demetrius Somerville hit five three-pointers. The Patriots made 11 of 23 three-point shots; Long Beach’s previous opponents made only 26% of their three-pointers.

Fourth-year George Mason Coach Paul Westhead, formerly of Loyola Marymount and the Lakers, began playing zone last season when defections, academic casualties and injuries reduced his roster to eight scholarship players.

Westhead, who has dubbed the 2-3 “hands-up Harry,” discovered the zone can trigger his signature fast break as effectively as a man-to-man defense.

Tuesday night, George Mason substituted fresh bodies--Westhead used all 12 players on the roster--to blanket Cotton on the perimeter, which occasionally left the interior open for Yankelevitz (14 points, 11 rebounds) and junior forwards Akeli Jackson (10 points) and Marcus Johnson (nine second-half points).