49ers jump into big time

By Phil Witte
Daily Forty-Niner

Head Coach Wayne Morgan will get a good gauge on how his team stacks up nationally when Long Beach State (3-2) takes on Pac-10 power Stanford at The Pyramid Saturday night at 7:35 p.m.

Stanford (4-0) comes into the game ranked No. 3 in the ESPN/USA Today poll.

"Stanford is one of the top five teams in the country, they can beat you any number of ways," Morgan said.

The Beach's frontline of Travis Reed, Rudy Williams and Lemi Williams will have to do battle with Stanford's towering trio, which includes twins 7-foot center Jason and 6-foot-11 forward Jarron Collins and 6-foot-7 forward Ryan Mendez.

"We going to have to play our butts off because Stanford is not a team that's going to beat themselves," said Reed. "They play a sag and man defense and they dare opponents to shoot threes. The three can help or hurt you and we just have to make sure we play our up and down game."

Most troublesome for the Beach will likely be 6-foot6 guard Casey Jacobsen, last season's Sporting News freshman of the year. The task of shutting down Jacobsen, who is averaging 18.5 points and 4.3 rebounds a game, will likely fall to guard Rock Lloyd.

With Lloyd occupied, Lemi Williams will have to pick up the scoring slack, and the game could feature a three-point shooting duel, as both Jacobsen and Williams are hitting 50 percent or better on treys this season.

Scoring at all might be a challenge for The Beach as Stanford's tenacious defense has held opponents to a mere 56.8 points a game on 35.7 percent field goal shooting.