Long Beach State men's basketball falls to Hawaii in Big West championship

ANAHEIM >> All any NCAA mid-major basketball team wants is to play for a chance to reach the NCAA Touament.

The Long Beach State men’s basketball team had that opportunity on Saturday night at Honda Center. Trailing top-seeded Hawaii 62-60 with 18.2 seconds left, 49ers point guard Justin Bibbins missed a potential game-wiing 3-pointer and the Rainbow Warriors held on to win, 62-60.

Top-seeded Hawaii (27-5) lost in the Big West Touament title game last year after beating Long Beach State in the quarterfinals.

Junior Aaron Valdes led Hawaii with 14 points as eight different Rainbow Warriors scored at least four points each.

Long Beach State senior Nick Faust finished with a game-high 17 points and eight rebounds. Justin Bibbins and Travis Hammonds both had 12 points for the 49ers, who shot 22 for 59 (37 percent) from the field and 5-for-22 from 3-point range. Hawaii shot 46 percent from the field.

Long Beach State was the No. 3 seed and beat UC Riverside and UC Irvine to reach the final.

Both offenses were in the flow from the tip, but that didn’t last long. Long Beach State’s aggressiveness got the 49ers to the free-throw line and into the lead, 13-9, about eight mintues in. However, a cold shooting streak for Long Beach State coincided with a Hawaii 8-0 run that gave the top seed a 17-13 lead with eight minutes left in the half.

Hawaii then went on a five-minute scoreless streak, and Gabe Levin’s strong dunk through contact got Long Beach State back into the lead 18-17.

It was all Hawaii from that point on as it took a 31-25 lead to halftime despite stars Stefan Jankovic and Aaron Valdes sitting on bench with foul trouble.

Hawaii maintained at least a six-point advantage until Stefan Jovanovic’s three-point playpushed the lead to double digits with 15 minutes to play.

That’s when Hammonds, the Big West Sixth Man of the Year, put Long Beach State on his back. The junior hit his first two 3-pointers of the half, and his offensive rebound putback, plus the foul, made it 49-47 Hawaii with about nine minutes to play.

Long Beach State erased a 12-point deficit in the second half when Fuast hit a 3-pointer in front of his own bench to tie it 56-56 with 3:27 left. But the senior fouled out on the next play at the other end.

After the free throws gave Hawaii the lead, Big West Player of the Year Jankovic hit a 3-pointer that gave the Rainbow Warriors the lead for good.

Long Beach State missed three open looks in the final two mintutes that would’ve given the 49ers the lead.

This is the first trip to the NCAA Touament for Hawaii since 2002 when it was a member of the Weste Athletic Conference.

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