GIVE THEM CREDIT

The Beach's players and outgoing coach Monson needed inspiration from no one but each other

Don’t be upset there wasn’t an upset; smile because there was even a chance one could happen.

That’s how this No. 15-seeded Long Beach State team went out Thursday against the No. 2 Arizona Wildcats, losing 85-65 but fighting with vigor till the end in a first-round NCAA Tournament game at the Delta Center.

The Beach boys couldn’t do more than put some first-half stress on the higher seed — and, since we’re all inundated with gambling news of late, to cover the 20.5-point spread.

“You can lose, and that’s unacceptable (but) there’s no losers up here, we got beat tonight,” LBSU coach Dan Monson said. “They outplayed us, but they didn’t outtough us, they didn’t out-compete us.”

That will be what sticks with this team for a long Beach minute, not the unfortunate details of Arizona outscoring Long Beach State 44-30 in the second half.

What Monson and the men on his roster will remember will be punching a hard-to-get ticket to the Big Dance for the

first time since 2012 and the second time in their coach’s 17-year tenure.

They’ll think, surely, of their irreverent, storybook surge with a coach who was, as he put it, working for free. Pulling, he said, a George Costanza, though he did the “Seinfeld” character one better: Monson wasn’t trying to get fired — he already accomplished that part.

What he was doing was making a point to his team, finishing his tenure on his own time, if not his own terms, after he

was excused from his position March 11, before the Big West Conference Tournament.

But wait. Give credit where it’s due now. Show some love to the unsung hero of this story.

Here, give Jadon Jones a crack at it: “We love each other. We love this game. We love Coach,” the junior guard said. “We love the media team. We love the janitors, we love the staff. We love the families. Mama Darci, Maddox, Micguire, Mollie, Mckenna. We love everyone. All the wives ...”

But what about the architect — self-proclaimed — of the whole rousing exercise?

The university’s first-year athletic director Bobby Smitheran, who made the brilliant move of firing — or something — Monson?

“My belief and hope is that by doing what I did and the timing of it, they would play inspired, and that’s what they did,” Smitheran told The Associated Press

CHRISTIAN PETERSEN — GETTY IMAGES Long Beach State coach Dan Monson talks with Lassina Traore (23) and Amari Stroud during Thursday’s game against Arizona.

PHOTO BY JJ FIDDLER LBSU athletic director Bobby Smitheran, right, says that firing Monson on March 11 inspired his team to its late-season run.

Mirjam Swanson Columnist