Long Beach State Winds Up All Wet

Take away the new-age mythology, add a few thousand tons of pounding rain water, usher inside a top-20 opponent still steaming over a loss at Santa Barbara and Long Beach State’s dazzling new Pyramid becomes . . . what?

Thursday night, it was just another building with a leaky roof and a soggy home team.

Because of the plague-like flash-flooding that turned the city of Long Beach into ancient Egypt for a day Wednesday, Long Beach almost had to move its Big West Conference opener against New Mexico State out of its $22-million, state- of- the- art, previously- thought- to- be- watertight basketball arena to higher, or drier, ground.

This would have been brilliant strategy on the 49ers’ part-- move the game, don’t tell New Mexico State-- but after several nervous hours and amid a half-dozen drip-collecting water buckets on the Pyramid floor, Long Beach finally got a break in the weather, if not on the schedule.

Around 6 o’clock Wednesday evening, the cloudburst ceased and the seven-foot high tide in the Pyramid loading dock stopped short of the arena floor, enabling the 49ers and the Aggies to avoid a rare Big West basketball rainout.

“It would have been catastrophic,” Long Beach Athletic Director Dave O’Brien said, discussing the very real possibility of water damage on The Pyramid’s $500,000 beechwood court.

As for the game, well, O’Brien didn’t want to repeat himself, but catastrophic was an adjective that fit there as well.

New Mexico State won, 98-78, after throwing a first-half shutout against the 49ers’ starting front line.

Believe it or not: Long Beach’s first-string combination of forwards Juaquin Hawkins and Mike Atkinson and center Joe McNaull combined for zero points--as in nil, as in nada, as in nothing--during the game’s first 20 minutes.

They didn’t fare much better thereafter, either, finishing with four points, total, while they and their overwhelmed replacements played defense as if they were still wearing yesterday’s galoshes.

With 16:05 left in the second half, New Mexico State’s Paul Jarrett sank a three-point jump shot, which ordinarily wouldn’t be worth mentioning, except on this night, it was the last shot of more than 10 feet the Aggies made.

And from 16:05 on, they outscored the 49ers, 44-36.

“We didn’t guard,” Long Beach Coach Seth Greenberg concisely analyzed. “We’re a good defensive team--we defended Michigan State last week as well as a team could defend them. But tonight, we weren’t in stance; we weren’t down.

“We didn’t have the intensity to defend in a league game.”

New Mexico State blew open the game with a 19-9, eight-minute run in the second half that reads like the play-by-play chart for a layup drill:

Rodney Walker, reverse layup.

Crafton Ferguson, tip-in.

Clyde Jordan, all alone under the basket, no white jersey within 10 feet of him.

Ferguson, soft little 10-foot jumper.

Keith Johnson, uncontested eight-foot bank shot.

Jordan, reverse layup.

Ferguson, reverse layup.

Mix in a few free throws and that’s the textbook version on how to take a 55-44 lead and pump it up to 74-53.

Looking at the silver lining, however, Long Beach did get the game in.

“For a while, I didn’t think it was gonna happen,” O’Brien said. “(Wednesday) night around 5:30, it was really pouring and it didn’t look like it was gonna stop. We were within an hour and a half--at the most--of losing the floor.

“The water was building up in the loading dock, seven feet high. We had a damn good swimming pool down there, with diving capabilities. Another hour and a half, that water would have reached the doors and seeped onto the floor.

“That would have annihilated us.”

According to O’Brien, the sump pump in the loading dock was doing its job, pumping water out into the city’s gutter drainage system, “but that got all filled up, so the water came rushing back in.

“Finally, we found a couple auxiliary pumps, hooked them up and pumped the water out onto the ballfields. That saved us.”

That, and a few janitor’s mops, which were required to remove the puddles on The Pyramid floor.

“We had several leaks, three of them on the main court,” O’Brien said. “You have to remember: This isn’t a finished building yet. Technically, this is still a construction site. They sealed the roof from the top down, but the bottom fourth hasn’t been sealed.”

That will happen within the next month, O’Brien promised.

As for the 49er defense, Greenberg can always ask the construction crew if he can borrow some caulk.