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By STEVE HENSON

Nov. 23, 1999 12 AM PT

* PEPPERDINE (1-0) at FRESNO STATE (1-0), 7--The Waves made Coach Jan van Breda Kolff’s debut successful Saturday by defeating Long Beach State, 76-74. It appears that Tommie Prince, the West Coast Conference defensive player of the year last season, will be more involved in the offense in van Breda Kolff’s up-tempo scheme. Prince, a senior forward, scored 17 points against the 49ers and made the last basket with 32.3 seconds to play. Fresno State opened with a 74-64 victory over Georgia State. Demitrius Porter scored 23 points. The Bulldogs probably will be without preseason All-American guard Courtney Alexander and center Melvin Ely, both of whom have stress fractures. Alexander averaged 21.4 points last season and Ely scored 53 points in two exhibitions.

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Steve Henson

Steve Henson is a reporter with the Fast Break sports team at the Los Angeles Times. He previously served as an assistant editor and reporter in the Sports department. Henson was a leader in digital-only newsrooms from 2007-19 as a senior editor and columnist at Yahoo Sports and as senior editor at the USA Today Sports Media Group. This is his second stint at The Times, having covered the Dodgers and UCLA as well as doing enterprise, investigative and features writing from 1985-2007. Henson was awarded first place in sports features in 2021 by the L.A. Press Club and has been honored several times by the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) and also by the California News Publishers Assn., the Football Writers Assn. of America and U.S. Basketball Writers Assn.

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