Long Beach State men’s basketball coach Dan Monson has a legacy of rebuilding programs at other universities, but can he put the 49ers back on top?

PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY

Dan Monson has been here before. Not here here—Monson only knew Southern California by reputation when Long Beach State’s athletic director phoned in 2007 to suggest he apply to be the basketball coach. His wife wept when he told her about the opportunity, and not out of gratitude. “Her perceptions of the Los Angeles area were all from CNN—you know, smog, earthquakes, violence, traffic,” Monson explains. “We thought our kids were either going to be in the Bloods or the Crips, and they would have to choose the first day.”

The here that Monson knows very well is the place where the Long Beach State basketball program has been stuck for so long—a mid-major school with a so-so athletic budget and a flickering tradition trying to make a national name for itself against institutions with money, power and prestige . . . without breaking the rules. Monson has been there and done that. A couple of times.

“It doesn’t appeal to me at all,” he asserts. “But fortunately or unfortunately or whatever, I do have experience at it. This is the third program I’ve taken over that had NCAA sanctions, the third program that I’ve had to, if not rebuild, then elevate.”

Monson is the guy who transformed tiny Gonzaga University, located in Spokane—that’s in Washington . . . the state—into a national basketball force. He got a little criticism when he parlayed that little miracle into a big promotion, getting good money to run to the University of Minnesota in the mighty Big Ten Conference, where he was assigned to reform one of the most academically corrupt programs in history. Monson did it—and eventually took Minnesota to the NCAA playoffs, too. But when he failed to return the program to the kind of powerhouse it had been when it was paying people to do classwork for the players, Monson got a lot of criticism. On Nov. 1, 2006—seven games into the 2006-2007 season that had begun with a 2-7 record—Monson was finally forced out, although Minnesota gave him the debatable dignity of technically resigning with a buyout.

That’s when Long Beach State called, basically to offer him more of the same. The 49ers were coming off a trip to the NCAA Tournament (a short trip: they were crushed by Tennessee 121-86 to end their 2006-2007 season). They had also just been busted and sanctioned for some rule-breaking of their own under the supervision of just-fired Larry Reynolds. Oh, and another thing: they were losing nearly every productive player on their roster.

To Long Beach State, a proven reformer like Monson looked very attractive. To Monson, Long Beach State looked . . . hmmm, how to put this?

“I told my wife, ‘We don’t have to take the job—but we don’t have one right now. Let’s go look,’” he recalls. “She was in Long Beach, like, half a day, and she loved it. We couldn’t believe we were in the Southern California we’d thought so many bad things about.”

As for the basketball team?

“I’d never seen a program lose nine seniors—among them the top eight scorers,” Monson says, shaking his head. “I guess if you coach long enough you’ll see everything. But that—even more than the NCAA sanctions—made this assignment more challenging.

“But the biggest sanction—not being able to recruit junior-college kids for a year—ended up being our biggest blessing. We focused on high-school kids, and the four we got have become the cornerstones for what we are doing now.”

All this is Monson’s diplomatic way of framing the circumstances that forced Long Beach State to suffer through a 6-25 record during his first season and enabled it climb to a 15-15 record during his second.

But ask him if there are aspects of his character that suit him for this kind of rescue work and Monson’s way with words abandons him. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to jinx himself to a lifetime of it. Hell, he’s already 48.

“Keeping a program together through a 6-25 year is really difficult. It’s just endurance,” Monson emphasizes. “Those are things that, unfortunately, I do have experience going through. I don’t know if my personality is good for rebuilding; I just think any good coach is going to take whatever it is and keep building. I’ve just, unfortunately, taken three of them that needed that. Maybe other people have just been wiser about the jobs they took.”

The rumble-and-chirp of basketballs and sneakers flies from the waxed wooden floor of the Pyramid like sparks from flint and steel. They ignite a roiling mixture of shouts and grunts and the heavy breathing of athletic exertion, and it all echoes toward the distant pinnacle of the iconic gymnasium like a kind of sonic smoke. This is the annual autumnal offering from the Long Beach State basketball program and its dwindling faithful to the powers that have proven so much greater than them for such a long, long time.

Of course, you could also call it the 49ers’ intrasquad game. That’s what it was called in the fliers that invited people to this first public preview of the 2009-2010 team—a collection of players that are favored to win the Big West Conference title this season . . . sorta like the glory days, you might say, although it’s almost cruel to do so. Those days were almost four decades ago.

Forty years is about twice the lifetimes of the players who are creating all that sacred noise as they scramble up and down the Pyramid court in makeshift teams called Black and Gold. For fans old enough to have witnessed the legend of Long Beach State basketball as it happened, it can seem even longer than that—almost beyond what they can believe they really saw.

But you can look it up:

• From 1968 to 1973, Long Beach State compiled a record of 120-20. The 49ers went to the NCAA playoffs the last four years of that span—and the final time warmed up for the Tournament with a regular-season-ending win over sixth-ranked Marquette University before 12,987 fans at the Long Beach Arena in a game that lifted them to No. 3 in the country.

• During the middle of that run—1970, 1971 and 1972—Long Beach State was stopped short of the Final Four only by defeats at the hands of then-perennial national champion UCLA. The 49ers were leading the 1971 game against UCLA by 11 points deep into the second half, but lost by two points on a pair of free throws.

• In 1974, Long Beach may have had its best team of all—it finished with a 24-2 record—but couldn’t advance to the NCAA playoffs because it had been disqualified for rules violations . . . and thus began the program’s long, slow decline—featuring 10 head coaches and interrupted by only periodic upticks—that has brought the 49ers to this intrasquad scrimmage/prayer meeting.

There hasn’t been an autumn since the mid 1970s that hasn’t evoked memories of that era—or more to the point, stoked an inextinguishable yearning to revive it. Along the way, Long Beach State’s various athletic leaders tried almost everything.

They tried the trickle-up theory by hiring Ron Palmer, the legendary Poly High coach, whom they figured would funnel his seemingly endless stream of local prep talent to similar success on the next level.

They tried the trickle-down theory by hiring Wayne Morgan, a top assistant at perennially powerful Syracuse University, whom they figured would bring along the winning formula devised by his mentor, the great Jim Boeheim.

They tried young prodigies, like Seth Greenberg and Joe Harrington, who worked well for awhile but then left for better jobs. They tried an old professor, Tex Winter, and they’ve tried somebody from the proletariat . . . um, does anybody even remember Dwight Jones anymore?

They tried rechristening their traditional home court, changing the name of the tiny Campus Gym to the Gold Mine. They tried upgrading their facilities, abandoning that no-matter-what-you-call-it-it’s-still-a-sweatbox gym for an athletic cathedral—the 18-story Pyramid, which has been pointing the way toward heaven for 15 years but still hasn’t gotten them to the top.

It’s all been very trying, and all these years later, Long Beach State is still waiting to be . . . you know . . . Long Beach State. Apparently, however, that’s not going to happen today.

“Well,” Monson sighs when the scrimmage has ended, trying to combine the long view with what he just witnessed during the Gold team’s 95-77 win over the Black, “we’re going to be waiting a lot longer if we don’t play defense any better than that.”

Long Beach State’s basketball staff occupies a second-floor suite of offices in the Pyramid, and Monson’s smartly-decorated space overlooks the court through a wide pane of spotless glass, like one of those private boxes in other arenas. It’s an awesome view—the darkly futuristic monkeybarism that supports the building’s shell and the bright retro-yellow plastic seats that support its clientele seem as clean and new as the day the place opened.

Monson appreciates the facility—“It shows the extent of the commitment from the university,” he says—but he had some pretty sweet digs at the University of Minnesota, too. He’s reached a point in his career—or maybe just in his life—where he’s learned to look beneath the glitz to the root of them both. Turns out, it’s the very same place.

Dan Monson grew up the son of a college basketball coach—Don Monson, who served long stints at University of Idaho and the University of Oregon. He’s been at it long enough now that he’s beginning to see what that heritage means, and not just because of the obvious.

“My dad didn’t teach me how to coach; we didn’t sit around the driveway at home and talk about where to push the ball on defense,” he says. “But my dad taught me what it is to be a coach—and if you had to pick one or the other in this day and age, what it is to be a coach is way more important than the Xs and Os of how to coach.

“You’ve got to be able to manage people, run a program, handle adversity. The lows are so much lower than the highs are high that growing up in a family that lived through those things really helped me.”

Not that we should ignore the obvious father-son connection, though. Don Monson had a knack for reviving struggling college basketball teams, too. In 1979 he took over a dismal University of Idaho program, and in three years the team was in the NCAA playoffs, advancing to the Sweet 16 and finishing the 1982 season with a 27-3 record and a No. 8 national ranking. In 1983, he took the University of Oregon job in the powerful Pacific 10 Conference and in one year transformed the team’s 9-18 record into a 16-13 mark. But Monson was never able to give Oregon the perennial winner it wanted, and he was fired after a 1992 season in which the team was 6-21.

“My career kind of mirrors my dad’s in lots of ways,” observes Dan. “He’s been a tremendous mentor for me. That’s why I’m in coaching—because I idolized my dad growing up. He knows it. He always says this about me, and it’s really kinda true: ‘I have all the answers when things are going good, but when things are going bad, I always call my dad.’”

Monson called his dad a lot during his eight years in Minnesota, especially during the last few seasons, which featured relentless assaults on his ego. The criticism ranged from booing in the stands to critical columns in the newspapers to more than one Web site like FireDanMonson.blogspot.com—which signed off thusly when Monson finally resigned: “This site’s mission has been accomplished. It will remain up as a historical artifact, but no more posts will be made.”

As unabashedly happy as he is to be gone, Monson won’t bash Minnesota. He insists he has no regrets, and not only because his big buyout enabled him to settle so comfortably into the higher cost of living with a wife and four kids in Southern California.

“It wasn’t a good experience for me there, but I wouldn’t trade it,” he says. “I think I’m a better person, and I know I’m a better coach. It really made me evaluate myself, and it solidified my belief in myself and what I am doing.

“I never changed my philosophy from the day I arrived until the day I left. And they can say what they want, but I left that program in good standing. But I also learned that money doesn’t make me happy—winning does.”

In other words, Monson has called his dad a lot since he’s come to Long Beach, too, especially during that first season.

“I call him after every loss, pretty much,” he acknowledges. “Maybe not that night, but within a day or two later.”

Monson has found other ways to console himself, however.

“During that first year, when we were 6-25, I went down to jog on the beach before every home game,” he says, “just to remind myself why I was going through it all.”

It’s been 35 years since Glenn McDonald was an All-American swingman for the Long Beach State basketball team—and the first-round draft choice of the Boston Celtics—but sometimes he still wanders down to the old Campus Gym to watch practice. He doesn’t have to go far. McDonald has been back on campus since his pro basketball career ended in 1984, sometimes coaching and these days serving as the director of intramurals.

As one of the players who wrote Long Beach State’s glorious basketball history under its wheeler-dealer coach, Jerry “Tark the Shark” Tarkanian, and as one of the faithful who have ridden what he calls “the roller coaster” of events since, McDonald cannot remember being more enthusiastic about the program’s possibilities.

“I see something special happening here with Monson—it’s just a whole different scene,” says McDonald. “He has a way with the players. They have a lot of respect for him. He jokes around, but they also know that when he’s serious—when he wants it done—it has to get done. That part reminds me of Tark.”

So does the way Monson seems to be communicating that energy to the community, fans and players alike.

“I didn’t grow up in Long Beach; I grew up watching the great teams at UCLA and USC,” says McDonald, who played at Jefferson High in Los Angeles. “But I came to Long Beach State because I wanted to be on a team that could beat UCLA and USC. I was always somebody who rooted for the underdog. I was intrigued by Tark. I saw how Long Beach was coming around. I wanted to be a part of it.”

Monson appreciates McDonald’s perspective and the voice it gives to all those almost-old-timers who persist in chasing Long Beach State’s almost-ancient tradition.

“Absolutely. That’s one of the things that separates us from other Big West schools,” Monson points out. “It’s nice to have a facility like the Pyramid and a city with the high-school talent of Long Beach. But when you can say how many times we’ve been to the NCAA Tournament and how many of our players have been to the NBA—it’s watered down by how you calculate it, but it’s like 80 pros—that’s what young players are interested in. That tradition is huge.”

Monson tries to tap into it as much as possible.

“I’ve had Glenn talk to our team, Jerry Tarkanian has talked to our team, Tex Winter, Ed Ratleff, James Cotton—you can go on and on,” he says. “Any time any of those guys come around, I make sure that our players know who they are—that they are the ones whose jerseys are hanging in the rafters. Because that’s who they want to be.”

This year’s Long Beach State team is led by sophomore Larry Anderson, who, at 6’6”, has similar dimensions to some of those 49er greats. He also happens to be coming off a season in which he became the first freshman to be selected to the Big West’s all-conference team since Clifton Pondexter (also of Long Beach State, back in 1974). Even better, Anderson is a local, coming to the 49ers from Jordan High. Best of all, he’s among four returning starters (senior Stephan Gilling and sophomores T.J. Robinson and Casper Ware being the others) from a team whose 15-15 record included a 10-6 mark in conference play.

But although the preseason pollsters have picked Long Beach State to win the Big West Conference title, Monson says he’s a long way from unfurling the Mission Accomplished banner. Well, actually, he says he’s about halfway—with the harder half yet to go.

“Everything points to halfway,” he says. “We were 15-15. We didn’t win the league, but we were close to a bunch of good stuff. That was the easy part, though, because we started at the bottom of the mountain.

“I told my players on the first day of practice, ‘The easy part of advancing a program is to take it from laughing stock to respectability; the hard part is to go from respectability to a great program.

“I would be elated if we were sitting here next year and we’d won the league and been to the NCAA Tournament. I still don’t think that’s the top—I think this program can go higher than that—but it would be great. But even getting there is a long way, a lot of steps, from where we are right now. We’ve got the hard climb left—a lot harder than I think most people realize.”

Monson knows. He’s been there a couple of times. And back.

Tags: 49ers, basketball, csulb, Dan Monson, jerry tarkanian, Long Beach, Sports, the pyramid