Brian Camper sure didn’t look like the happiest Long Beach State camper. He may very well have been, though.
While his teammates were whooping and hollering after the 49ers’ astonishing 64-49 victory over Kansas on Monday night in Allen Fieldhouse, Camper was sitting quietly on a bench in the locker room.
Wasn’t the 6-4 junior forward thrilled to knock off the No. 1-ranked Jayhawks?
“Yeah, but man I’m tired,” he replied, smiling. “I played the whole game.”
Actually, Camper played all but two minutes and in that time didn’t do anything more distinguished than produce a game-high five assists. Yet his pre-game plea surely gave the Niners an extra impetus.
“LAST TIME I played here I was with Arizona State and we lost by 30,” Camper said. “I told the guys at the hotel, `You gotta win this for me. They embarrassed me last time.'”
That was on Dec. 22, 1989, and Kansas walloped the Sun Devils, 90-67.
That score is awfully similar to another score Camper and the rest of the 49ers would rather forget. On Saturday night in Richmond, Va., Virginia Commonwealth crumbled Long Beach State, 95-61.
“I think we overlooked VCU because most of us had never heard of that school,” Camper said.
Maybe the Niners did overlook VCU, but coach Seth Greenberg didn’t know what to think when he looked over the video of that humiliation.
“After that VCU game, you watch the tape and you wonder if you’ll ever win again,” Greenberg said.
Then, about 48 hours later, he’s on the road and his team has a double-digit lead over the No. 1-ranked team in the country.
“IT’S LIKE a dream,” Greenberg said. “I’m sitting there with 20 seconds on the clock, and we’re winning and the game is about over and. . .unbelievable. I don’t know what to say.”
Greenberg may have been at a loss for words afterward, but he had plenty to say to his players beforehand.
“I told them that tonight if you don’t play your butts off, tomorrow morning you’re gonna see yourselves on ESPN being embarrassed, and you’re gonna see yourselves in USA Today being embarrassed,” he said.
Instead, Long Beach State, a team that had climbed as high as No. 25 in the AP poll two weeks ago before tumbling out, embarrassed the top-ranked team in the country. And in its own barn, too.
“The basketball gods were definitely with us,” Greenberg said. “We made some shots that bounced up and took six seconds to fall through.”
The gods wouldn’t have mattered if Greenberg didn’t have a plan. He did. Greenberg spread the floor in order to eat the clock and prevent the Jayhawks from trapping in the corners.
THAT’S THE same strategy Texas-El Paso’s Don Haskins used when the Miners shocked Kansas in the NCAA Tournament last year. Greenberg did not, however, borrow a page from Haskins’ book.
“I think UTEP got it from us,” Greenberg said. “That’s how we played the game last year. And we had an opportunity to win that one.”
Indeed, Greenberg employed the same tactics last year in Long Beach Arena, but Kansas pulled out a 66-60 victory.
Guard Lucious Harris, a high school teammate of KU’s Adonis Jordan, scored 24 points in last year’s meeting. On Monday night, Harris matched that number, but his post-game feelings were, of course, much different.
“It didn’t hit me ’til the horn went off,” Harris said afterward. “I believe it now.”
