January 24, 1999
49ers squeeze past UCI
Basketball: Malisa shot in final seconds wins it for LBSU.
By GORDON VERRELL
Staff writer Long Beach Press Telegram
Mate Malisa came up barely an eyelash short on his shot at the buzzer in Long Beach State's two-point overtime loss Thursday night at Cal State Fullerton.
No problem. On Saturday night - Bingo! - the 6-11 center swished in a 12-footer with 8.4 seconds left in the game, and the 49ers came away with a nailbiting 64-63 Big West Conference men's basketball victory over UC Irvine before 3,742 stunned fans at the Bren Center.
Even then, despite his game-winning shot, the unassuming Malisa insisted that he wasn't the hero, that it was point guard Charles O'Neal.
"My play was not the biggest play," said Malisa, who finished with 15 points. "Charles made a great defensive play at the end.
"He saved the game for us."
O'Neal streaked in behind UCI's fine freshman guard, Jerry Green, who had scored on an 18-foot jumper with 31 seconds left to lift the Anteaters into a one-point lead, 63-62.
Green was angling toward the basket with seconds left when O'Neal dived in from behind, batting the ball away.
It wound up in Marek Ondera's hands in the corner, and his desperation shot at the buzzer banged off the back of the rim.
"I was just trying to get a hand on the ball, anything," said O'Neal, who now has a softball-sized strawberry on his backside to go along with the hip pointer that forced him to miss practice on Friday.
"I saw (Green) was about to make a cut, I looked at the clock, and I just tried to do something."
O'Neal was particularly grateful for the win, especially after the 49ers' late meltdown two nights earlier at Fullerton.
"We just gave that game away," said O'Neal. "That made this game a big motivational game for us."
It was a good one, too, with the 49ers improving to 8-9 overall and 5-2 in the Big West to climb back into first place in the Western Division.
The biggest lead for either team was six points, and there were five lead changes in the final minute and a half.
"It's a dogfight every game," said Ramel "Rock" Lloyd, who rebounded from his poorest game as a 49er, his four-point effort at Fullerton, to toss in 18 points.
Lloyd made a 17-foot jumper with 59 seconds left that gave the 49ers a one-point lead, 62-61.
Twenty-eight seconds later Green scored to put the Anteaters (1-5, 5-11) ahead by one, and the 49ers immediately called time out.
"We wanted to get the ball to Mate, to get him isolated one-on-one," Coach Wayne Morgan said.
Malisa got the ball, all right, but it was one-on-two, with UCI's Adam Stetson and Ben Jones draped all over him.
But Malisa got the shot off anyway.
"They just mugged him," Lloyd said.
Malisa was diplomatic. "Maybe I was fouled, maybe I wasn't," he said.
Said Jones: "Give the guy credit. He made the basket.
"We played good defense on him, but he made a tough shot."
A number of people have, it appears.
The loss was the fifth in a row for the Anteaters, hardly the way UCI coach Pat Douglass wanted to spend his 49th birthday.
"It would have been nice," he said afterward, shaking his head.