Scouting report: Arizona Wildcats vs. Long Beach State Beach

The Star's Bruce Pascoe previews all of the game day essentials, from projected starting lineups to storylines and series history, ahead of the Arizona Wildcats' game against the Long Beach State Beach.

Game info

Who: Long Beach State (2-3) at No. 14 Arizona (5-0)

Where: McKale Center

When: Sunday, 6:30 p.m.

TV: Pac-12 Networks

Radio: 1290-AM, 107.5-FM

Follow: @TheWildcaster on Twitter / TheWildcaster on Facebook

Probable starters: Arizona

G Nico Mannion (6-3 freshman)

G Dylan Smith (6-5 senior)

F Josh Green (6-6 freshman)

F Zeke Nnaji (6-11 freshman)

C Chase Jeter (6-10 senior)

Probable starters: Long Beach State

G Michael Carter (6-5 sophomore)

G Colin Slater (6-1 junior)

F Chance Hunter (6-6 sophomore)

F Romelle Mansel (6-9 freshman)

C Joshua Morgan (6-11 freshman)

How they match up

The series: Arizona is 7-0 against Long Beach State and has beaten the Beach by an average of 26.5 points over five previous meetings in the Sean Miller era, though all of the games have been in Tucson. The last game was a much-needed confidence builder for Arizona, which had lost all three games in the 2017-18 Battle 4 Atlantis but came back to McKale Center to drub LBSU 91-56 when six players scored in double figures.

Game contract: Arizona is paying LBSU a one-time appearance guarantee of $90,000. The game is technically an add-on to the Wooden Legacy event, giving both the Wildcats and Beach a chance to play four games total for the event that count as only three under NCAA scheduling rules. UA and LBSU are in separate Wooden brackets so could only meet again on the final day.

LBSU overview: After three straight seasons under .500, Long Beach State is all but starting over under 13th-year coach Dan Monson. The Beach, as it is now exclusively wants to be known, is starting five newcomers and is playing its two returning starters off the bench. Guard Michael Carter and versatile wing Chance Hunter are its biggest threats, with Hunter arriving from junior college to hit 11 of 15 3s so far this season and 59.6% of his shots overall.

A long shooter on the wing and the team's primary point guard, Carter played sparingly as a freshman at Washington before playing last season at South Dakota State – then welcomed himself back to Pac-12 floors by dropping 20 points on UCLA.

LBSU’s top returning scorer, Jordan Roberts, is coming off the bench despite finishing last season strongly while so is guard Jordan Cobb, a part-time starter last season who helped hold UA’s Max Hazzard to 2-of-11 shooting at UC Irvine last season when Hazzard was a standout for the Anteaters. Tulane transfer Colin Slater is a gritty combo guard who can break defenses down with the ball. Meanwhile, Monson has been going with two freshmen inside, Romelle Mansel and Joshua Morgan, who has already blocked 10 shots and shot 76.5 percent from the field.

LBSU has been a good 3-point shooting team but tend to give it all back on the other end, allowing Division I opponents to shoot 47.6% from the field and 39.8% from 3-point range. It plays a mix of zone and man defenses.

The Beach lost just 69-65 at UCLA to open the season but lost 86-58 at Stanford and 81-63 at St. Mary’s in one of Monson’s typically tough nonconference schedules.

He said it

“They’re guard-oriented and those guys are really looking to be aggressive and attack out of ball screens and in transition. They’re a good 3-point shooting team and they shoot it from 3-4 spots so they’re really dangerous there.

"The thing that made the UCLA game tough was they had nine threes, six in the first half. …. Williams is a jump-shooter who’s a sniper, off ball-screens, dribbles, catch-and-shot.

"When he gets a good look, you’ve got to close out hard on him, with high hands and know where he is at all times. … Hunter is their best player. He scores at all levels, rim, mid-range, 3s, transitions, post-ups. I mean, he does it all.”

— Arizona assistant coach Justin Gainey, who scouted the Beach

Key player (Long Beach State): Chance Hunter

After spending a year at Cerritos College, where he hit double figures in 25 of 29 games, the juco transfer is making a quick splash into Division I, with 19 points at UCLA and 21 at San Diego while efficiently scoring on all levels.

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Key player (Arizona): Max Hazzard

The dismissal of Devonaire Doutrive clears more minutes for Dylan Smith, Jemarl Baker and Hazzard to mix in with Josh Green at the two wing spots, while Hazzard can also look for a little personal revenge Sunday against the Beach: In three games against LBSU last season as UC Irvine’s featured shooter, Hazzard was only 4 for 19 from 3-point range.

Sidelines

Is Mannion ‘sneaky?’

During a film review posted on ESPN, draft analyst Mike Schmitz broke down aspects of Nico Mannion’s game, such as his floaters and quick wrist roll passes while also discussing with him the immense impact so far of Zeke Nnaji.

Schmitz also asked Mannion if he was sick of being labeled as “sneaky athletic.”

“Um, kind of,” Mannion said. “I think I’ve shown I’m pretty athletic, playing above the rim every once in a while. I think I’m quicker than a lot of people think. So that that sneaky athletic (label), they can still say it. It doesn’t bother me but I just don’t think it fits me.”

The Beach Beach

Long Beach State’s seemingly odd decision this year to start calling its athletic teams only as “Beach” – a nickname the L.A. Times declared was “straight from the Dept. of Redundancy” – is rooted in its desire to distance itself from its increasingly controversial “49ers” nickname, which was a nod both to the school’s 1949 founding and the 1849 gold rush.

According to the Press-Telegram of Long Beach, 49er mascot known as “Prospector Pete” was removed in September 2018 after students repeatedly expressed concern about Prospector Pete’s nod to the California gold rush era.

The Press-Telegram quoted school president Jane Close Conoley saying it was “a time in history when the indigenous peoples of California endured subjugation, violence and threats of genocide.”

LBSU coach Dan Monson said there were “too many mixed signals politically,” even though the name also referred to the school’s founding.

“In this day and age, everything is so sensitive that you’ve got to make sure yet you err on the side of caution,” Monson said.

So the Beach beached Pete, whose statue is being relocated to an area of campus dedicated to alumni. The school earlier this year also commissioned a shark mascot to represent its shark lab and proximity to the beach.

The decision was fine with Monson, who said he never referred to his program’s team as “49ers”—but instead pushed to use the “Beach” moniker more often, somewhat as he did with “Zags” while building up Gonzaga in the 1990s.

“I remember when I first started at Gonzaga, nobody knew what ‘Zags’ were outside of Spokane,” Monson said. “With us being the only one out of (356) Division I schools having the word ‘Beach’ in it, I felt like that was something unique. And everybody wants to play at the beach, when you think about it.”

More mascot history

Meanwhile, one LBSU athletic team will not be referred to as the Beach: Its traditionally strong baseball program will still be known as “Dirtbags,” a nickname it picked up in the late 1980s because of how its infielders uniforms looked after routinely practicing hard on an all-dirt infield.

Together, Pete and the Dirtbags are part of the LBSU's colorful mascot history.

The school’s website says the Prospector Pete mascot “grew from our founding in 1949 and reflected our founding president Pete Peterson’s common references to having struck the gold of education by establishing Long Beach State College.”

Quoting something called the “Desert Niner,” LBSU’s website also noted that Pete was actually just known as “49er man” until a student vote was taken sometime in the late 1980's or early 90's. In addition, he once had a co-mascot, a donkey named "Nugget".

Other LBSU mascots of sorts included a 90s-era black-and-white hacky-sack that said "Go Beach" and a female in the mid-80's who wore a Madonna-style faux-cowboy hat and a giant foam rubber "49" at football games.

“Probably not members of the mascot hall of fame,” the Desert Niner noted.

Transition game

For Monson, having 11 new players at Long Beach State this season isn’t so much a problem as a necessity. Normally a strong mid-major program out of the Big West – a big reason why the Beach is invited to McKale Center every other year or so – LBSU won just 15 games in each of the past three seasons, and Monson said it was necessary to start over with new blood.

The only problem is that Monson always builds difficult nonconference schedules, meaning the new guys had to test themselves already at UCLA, Stanford and Saint Mary's. They lost all three of those games.

“I'm really trying to be more positive than the old Dan Monson through this preseason because I don't want them to lose confidence,” Monson said. ‘We've got a long way to go to get where we need to and these games can really be beneficial if they're in the right frame of mind and believe in themselves.”

Among those who is suddenly believing in himself: Chance Hunter, who initially headed for a Division II program, then spent a transition year in juco ball – and still wasn’t sure he was D-1 material.

“He’s just kind of developed through hard work, so it’s kind of a nice story to see a kid get rewarded like that,” Monson said. “Initially he was kind of hesitant. When we offered him he almost looked like, `Are you sure I'm good enough to do this?’ "

Monson said Hunter gained confidence during the Beach’s summer exhibition trip to Costa Rica and has carried that over into the regular season, leading the team in scoring (15.8) and shooting 59.6% from the field.

Numbers game

5 

Times LBSU will have played Arizona over the past 13 seasons after Sunday.

11

New players for LBSU on this season’s roster.

202

Wins at Long Beach State for Monson, most in school history