After Sluggish Start, Titans Work Overtime to Beat 49ers

For a while in the first half, the game Cal State Fullerton played hardly resembled basketball.

“We sort of took it back into the Naismith era,” Titan Coach Bob Hawking said.

Hawking was able to joke about it because his Titans came alive in the second half Thursday night and went on to a 66-64 overtime victory over Long Beach State in front of 1,127 in Titan Gym.

The loss was only the second for the 49ers (7-9) in six Big West Conference games. It was the second Big West victory in five games for Fullerton (8-7).

The Titans shot only 26% and made 13 turnovers in the first half before turning their game around in the second half. Fullerton shot 51% in the second half and cut its turnover total to six.

Ike Harmon scored a season-high 22 points, with the big basket coming on a driving jump shot with 48 seconds left in overtime that gave Fullerton a three-point lead.

The 49ers came back on a basket by Antrone Lee that cut the deficit to a point with 11 seconds to play, but Kenroy Jarrett made the second of two free throws little more than a second later to restore a two-point Titan lead. Jarrett had 15 points in the game.

That held up for the Titan victory after Harmon blocked a shot by point guard Charles O’Neal, and Mate Milisa missed a desperation three-point try in the final seconds.

“Ike couldn’t have had a bigger block in his career than that one was,” Hawking said.

The Titans had a chance to win it in regulation, but Harmon missed an open shot from the side that rimmed off as time ran out. Titan guard Mark Murphy drove for the basket, but passed to Harmon when the Long Beach defense converged on him.

“I was shocked that I ended up with the ball,” Harmon said. “I thought Mark was going to take the shot. But I knew I had to come off of that and play hard in the overtime.”

Fullerton held Long Beach State’s top scorer, Ramel Lloyd, to four points. Lloyd, the third-leading scorer in the Big West, made only one of seven shots.

Jason Cunningham led the Titan defensive effort against Lloyd and had a key rebound basket in the overtime that gave Fullerton a two-point lead. Cunningham finished with 13 points, and was four of five from the floor. He had eight rebounds, second only to Harmon’s nine.

“In our defense, we tried to let Lloyd know that we weren’t going to give him any open shots,” Hawking said. “When we watched them, we didn’t see people try to stay with him on every possession. We wanted to limit his touches.”

Milisa led Long Beach with 25 points. Milisa, a 6-foot-11 center with an outstanding shooting touch from outside, made nine of 14 shots from the floor and five of seven from three-point range.

The victory ended the Titans’ overtime jinx. Fullerton had lost its last three games that had gone to overtime. The Titans’ last victory in extra time was against Pacific in 1996.

“I can’t explain that first half,” Hawking said. “It was really frustrating. We were fortunate that we checked in defensively. And we were fortunate that we were only down by four four points (23-19) the way we played.”