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Long Beach State coach Dan Monson sees few drawbacks in his play-anybody-anywhere style of scheduling.

The 49ers visit the CenturyLink Center at 9 p.m. Saturday for a BracketBusters game. Already this season, Long Beach has played at Pittsburgh, San Diego State, Louisville, Kansas and North Carolina. The 49ers played Xavier, Auburn and Kansas State on a neutral court.

In previous seasons, they've played Syracuse at the Carrier Dome, Kentucky at Rupp Arena and Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium. They've taken on Wisconsin, Texas and Notre Dame, all on their home courts.

"I've had a lot of coaches tell me I'm crazy," Monson said by phone from Long Beach. "I tell them, the only risk I see in playing a schedule like that is that it will get you fired. I've already been through that.

"I'm not going to let my wife put my overall career record on my tombstone. Minnesota took care of that."

Monson, who helped put Gonzaga basketball on the map as an assistant and then head coach, spent seven seasons at Minnesota before getting fired seven games into his eighth. He now is in his fifth season at Long Beach, where he has turned a down-and-out program into one in contention for a berth in the NCAA tournament.

His first Long Beach team went 6-25. The 49ers won 15 games in his second season as coach, 17 in his third and 22 last season. Long Beach is 19-6 heading into Saturday's game against the Bluejays, who this week slipped out of the national rankings. Had Creighton remained there, the Bluejays would have been the eighth ranked team the 49ers have played this season.

Four of their six losses have been to teams that are still ranked.

"I think the biggest benefit to playing this kind of a schedule is that everyone knows we do it," Monson said. "It's given us a little bit of recognition and exposure. And I think it's given our kids a little bit of confidence. Some people think the downside to playing a tough schedule is that it could cause kids to lose confidence.

"My experience that in today's society, with all these kids playing AAU ball all over the country, they have so much confidence that you can't beat it out of them. Sometimes, you have to lose some games to get their attention. Everyone thinks they can play at Kentucky until they actually play at Kentucky."

Monson brings a team to Omaha that has grown through those experiences. The 49ers start four seniors — guards Larry Anderson and Casper Ware and forwards Eugene Phelps and T.J. Robinson. Phelps is the only one of the four who has not scored 1,000 points, and he needs just 47 to join the club.

Robinson is Long Beach's all-time rebound leader. Anderson will finish his career ranked in the school's top 10 in points, rebounds and blocked shots. Although just 5-foot-10, Ware is considered one of the top point guards in the country.

"This might be the most athletic team I've coached," Monson said. "And when we recruited these guys, they were better athletes than basketball players. They've gotten better every year they've been here.

"A lot of people didn't think Larry Anderson could shoot when we recruited him. This year, he's shooting 44 percent from 3-point range. It's been very gratifying to see the improvement all of them have made."

That improvement has Long Beach State poised to claim the school's first NCAA tournament berth. The 49ers are unbeaten in the Big West Conference. With an NCAA RPI of 42, they are positioning themselves to possibly claim an at-large berth if they don't win the conference's automatic berth in the tournament.

"That's the common goal that has become very important to this group," Monson said. "We talked about it at the beginning of the year. I told them they were all going to be 1,000-point scorers. T.J. is going to wind up being the best rebounder in Big West history. They've rewritten the record books.

"I told them that's nice but that's individual stuff. A team's legacy is not defined by the individual stuff. They've bought into trying to get to the NCAA tournament, which is a sign of their maturity. They've developed an unselfish attitude that could allow us to do something a lot of people never thought they could."

Picking up a victory over Creighton, with its No. 27 RPI and 22 wins, would enhance the 49ers' bid to get to the tournament.

"We're getting an opportunity to play a Top 20 team — I know they're not ranked now but I still consider Creighton one of the best teams in the country," Monson said. "The first year we were here, our BracketBusters game was at New Mexico. Our RPI was about 300, and we got beat by about 300.

"It was one of the worse experiences I've had as a coach. Our players didn't care to play the game, I didn't care. We've been fortunate to play meaningful games on TV three of the last four years. And this is a very meaningful game for us. For us, the risk could definitely be worth it."

Contact the writer:

402-679-2298, steve.pivovar@owh.com

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