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sports:
men's basketball
49ers' schedule
spiced with tournament flavor
By Mike Haubrich
Summer Forty-Niner
The Long Beach
State men's 2001-02 basketball schedule was released Friday.
The 30-game schedule features eight games against six teams
that made the NCAA Tournament last season.
The 49ers, who
finished 18-13 last season will take on USC Dec. 12 at The
Pyramid and play at Stanford Dec. 15 in nonconference games.
Both USC and Stanford advanced to the NCAA's Elite Eight last
year.
LBSU will also
play non-conference games against Alabama State and Charlotte.
They will play two Big West Conference games each against
Utah State and Cal State Northridge. All four schools qualified
for the NCAA tournament last year.
"That's why
[players] come to college, to play the best people they can,"
said Head Coach Wayne Morgan, who enters his sixth year at
the helm of the LBSU program. "It will give us a measure
of where we are."
This will be the
first year of Big West Conference competition for CSUN, which
joins the conference after winning the Big Sky Conference
championship last season and earning its first-ever NCAA tournament
spot.
UC Riverside, which
played its first season at the Division I level as an independent
last year, will join the Big West this year.
"We welcome
them to the Big West," Morgan said. "Whoever is
on the schedule we'll play, one at a time."
The 49ers open
the season with two exhibition games at The Pyramid Nov. 1,
against the East L.A. All-Stars and Nov. 9 against Cal State
Dominguez Hills.
LBSU then begins
the regular season at the America's Youth Classic Nov. 15-17
in Eugene, Ore., where the 49ers will take on Western Michigan,
Alabama St. and Oregon.
The 49ers begin
their regular-season home schedule Nov. 24 against Charlotte.
Other nonconference games at The Pyramid are Cal State Monterey
Bay Nov. 26, Loyola Marymount Dec. 18 and Indiana-Purdue/Ft.
Wayne Dec. 29.
LBSU's nonconference
road schedule includes games at Texas A&M Nov. 30 and
Pepperdine Dec. 4.
Morgan's troops
will open Big West Conference play at defending conference
champion UC Irvine Dec. 22, and following the Indiana-Purdue/Ft.
Wayne matchup will begin a stretch of 17 straight conference
games to close out the regular season.
Key conference
games include road matchups Jan. 12 at Utah St., Jan. 26 at
UC Santa Barbara, Feb. 14 at Pacific and Feb. 16 at CSUN,
and home tilts against CSUN Jan. 17, Pacific Jan. 19 and Utah
St. Feb. 7.
The 49ers close
out the regular season with three straight home games against
UC Santa Barbara Feb. 21, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Feb. 23
and end the season against UC Irvine Feb. 28.
The Big West Conference
tournament will be played March 7-9 at the Anaheim Convention
Center with the conference's automatic berth to the NCAA tournament
on the line.
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