Preview: Long Beach State

THE ESSENTIALS

THE THEM

Long Beach State won the Big West regular-season title last year, then fell in the second round of the conference tourmanent to UC-Irvine before suffering a spectacular 112-66 defeat at the hands of Baylor in the opening game of the NIT. One could chalk that last game up to an off-night, but as it turned out the 49ers had some serious issues to work out; after the season, five players with eligibility remaining, including two starters, departed the program amid reports of serious turmoil within the team.

Three of those players had transferred to "The Beach", which contributed to the team's serious chemistry issues; head coach Dan Monson, faced with a smoking crater where there used to be a basketball team, brought in three new JuCo transfers this season in an attempt to put out the fire. Thus far, they haven't gelled, going 1-3 this season with the lone win against Division II Hawaii Pacific. They've lost away games against Arizona and Kansas State by 34 and 13 points, respectively, and dropped a one-point game at home against #155 Loyola Marymount.

Despite the massive turnover, two starters from last year's squad return. Junior point guard Mike Caffey is a turnover-prone high-usage player who tallies a good deal of assists and takes a lot of outside shots, which he hits a pretty middling rate: last season, he shot 42% from two and 33% from three. Senior forward Dan Jennings is a solid rebounder (especially offensively) and shot-blocker who's a decent finisher (52% shooting on all two-pointers last year) and a terrible free-throw shooter (46%).

All three other starters are incoming JuCo transfers, so we only have four games of data on them at this level. 6'3" guard A.J. Spencer is 10/16 shooting inside the arc and 0/6 from downtown with one assist to seven turnovers. Fellow 6'3" guard McKay LaSalle hasn't attempted a single two-pointer while going 7/27 from beyond the arc. 6'7" forward David Samuels has identical offensive and defensive rebounding rates of 11.3%; he's also shot just 7/26 from the field.

Key backups include two different players with turnover rates north of 30% (that's bad, m'kay) and two other players who've shot a combined 7/36 on the year. This team is not very good.

THE PROTIPS

Hit the glass. The 49ers defense allows an astounding 40.2% offensive rebound rate, and that's without facing a Mitch McGary this season. Michigan has a Mitch McGary. This should go well.

Work inside-out. That defense has also let opponents shoot 58.3% from two-point range, and they only have one rotation player (Jennings, at 6'9") taller than 6'7". Again, it's time for McGary to go to work, which should open up plenty of opportunities on the perimeter.

Let them chuck. If you couldn't glean this from the individual player stats above, Long Beach State is pretty terrible at the whole shooting thing; their 23.3% mark from three-point range is 324th in the country. Small sample size issues apply to all of this, of course, but I'd be more worried about making sure someone gets a body on Jennings and Samuels than getting out of position to contest outside shots.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 14

Elsewhere

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