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sports
Williams lost
for the season
By Phil Witte
On-line Forty-Niner
The basketball
gods giveth and the basketball gods taketh away.
After getting back three key big men who didn't play last
season - center Rudy Williams and forwards Vance Lawhorn and
Tadeu Souza - the Long Beach State men's basketball team looked
to have an inside game to match its outside game this season.
The outside game was dealt a blow when the team announced
last week that small forward Lemi Williams would sit out the
season on a medical redshirt with stress fractures in both
legs.
"I started feeling pain over the summer but I didn't
say anything and now I'm just in too much pain," Williams
said. "You can't understand how bad I feel, I've been
looking forward to playing with the five seniors all summer."
The senior was third on LBSU with 11.7 points and 3.8 rebounds
per game last season and led the team with 49 three-pointers.
The injury leaves the 49ers without a proven outside threat,
as guard Ron Johnson is the only roster player to have hit
more than 25 three-pointers in a season.
"It's going to affect our offense greatly," Coach
Wayne Morgan said. "Lemi was our best small forward,
our best perimeter scorer, and one of our best defenders."
Losing Williams will increase the pressure on JC transfer
Tony Darden, already expected to shoulder the scoring load
with the graduation of Rock Lloyd, last year's leading scorer.
Darden shot .440 on threes as a sophomore at Dodge City Community
College last year and .380 as a freshman.
"We're losing a big piece of our puzzle, but we can't
look back," Rudy Williams said. "We've got some
other [small forwards] that are pretty good."
Coach Chat
Long Beach State
men's basketball will hold an open practice followed by a
discussion with Head Coach Wayne Morgan tonight beginning
at 6:30 p.m. at The Pyramid.
The team's practice is scheduled to run from 6:30 to 8:00
p.m., followed by a question and answer session with Morgan.
Entry to the event will be near The Pyramid ticket office,
with parking passes available inside The Pyramid near the
men's locker room.
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