As word spread last Monday that Long Beach State basketball coach Dan Monson would not be back for an 18th season, junior forward Lassina Traore headed to campus, where he was met by a locker room scattered with sad faces.
Traore and his teammates immediately felt culpable for the inconsistent play that bottomed out with a five-game losing streak to close the regular season, a skid that precipitated the divorce between LBSU and Monson.
“It was not only his fault, it was everyone’s fault,” Traore said. “He’s not on the court playing with us. We’re making mistakes, we’re losing games.”
In atypical fashion, Monson was given leeway to complete his final season with Long Beach and the 62-year-old went right back to work in preparation for last week’s Big West Tournament in Henderson, Nevada.
Suddenly, those feelings of guilt and regret among the players gave way to hope and inspiration.
“They fired our coach and we need to have his back,” Traore decided.
Long Beach (21-14) then strung together its best three games of the season to win the tournament title and advance to the NCAA Tournament, both for the first time since 2012.
Players and coaches gathered at Monson’s home in Los Alamitos on Sunday, where they learned – in the final matchup revealed during the live Selection Show broadcast – that LBSU was seeded 15th in the West Region of the 68-team tournament and will face second-seeded Arizona (25-8) in a first-round matchup on Thursday in Salt Lake City. The game time has yet to be announced.
LBSU is 0-7 all-time against the Wildcats, last playing them in the 2019-20 season. Arizona was the Pac-12 regular-season champion before losing to Oregon in a Pac-12 Tournament semifinal on Friday night, and the Wildcats are coached by Tommy Lloyd, who Monson hired as a graduate assistant coach during his time at Gonzaga.
The winner of the LBSU-Arizona game will face either No. 7 seed Dayton (24-7) or No. 10 seed Nevada (26-7) in a second-round game on Saturday, also in Salt Lake City. The West Region semifinals and final will be played the following week at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Six-time national champion North Carolina (27-7) is the top seed in the region.
The image of Monson sharing the news of his impending departure still resonated with Traore on Saturday night and should continue to inspire the team in Salt Lake City.
“He came in the locker room and he told us, he said, ‘We didn’t let him down the whole season and he’s not going to let us down,’ not when we have to go to the (Big West) tournament,” Traore said. “He’s going to keep riding with us. He’s going to stay with us the whole time, so we couldn’t just come (to Henderson) and play like it doesn’t mean anything to us. We decided we’d win this tournament for the coach.”
Everybody met their goals.
Long Beach cut the nets down after winning three games in three days at the Dollar Loan Center and the players made sure Monson can leave town after walking the sidelines on the biggest stage in college basketball, something he’s already done once each at Gonzaga, Minnesota and LBSU.
“It’s a high that I’m really expecting these guys to enjoy and soak in,” Monson said. “I think this is a team that can win games in the (NCAA) tournament and we’re going to go find out.”
If Long Beach isn’t successful against Arizona, it won’t be for lack of preparation and effort.
In the hours and days that followed the announcement of Monson’s impending departure, the school’s all-time winningest coach (275-272) impressed his players with his unwavering work ethic and desire to finish his tenure the right way.
“He could have easily said, ‘Alright let’s just play,’ but he wanted to win, he wanted to do his job until the end,” Long Beach junior forward Aboubacar Traore said. “He’s been here 17 years, but he still wants to win. He still wants to do his job until the end and we’re like, ‘We’re going to do the same thing.’”
Aboubacar Traore immediately kept his word by recording the first triple-double in tournament history in an 86-67 victory over fifth-seeded UC Riverside in Long Beach’s tournament opener on Thursday, and just the second triple-double in program history.
The following day, fourth-seeded LBSU took on top-seeded UC Irvine, a team that had defeated Long Beach by double digits in both regular-season meetings, and Aboubacar Traore came back with 20 points, eight rebounds and seven assists in the 83-79 victory.
Just as impressively, Traore shot 12 for 13 from the free-throw line, including 8 for 8 in the final three minutes, after entering the game with a 63.7% mark for the season.
Aboubacar Traore’s triple-double overshadowed Lassina Traore’s season-high 21 points against UC Riverside, but the latter bettered that with a career-high 25 points in a 74-70 win against second-seeded UC Davis in the championship game on Saturday night.
“We were just like, no matter what happens, we just gave everything,” Aboubacar Traore said. “Like, make sure that when they say, ‘Coach Monson left, but he got a championship.’ That was the main thing.”
For the Traores, Monson has been more than just a coach. The unrelated Ivory Coast natives have been embraced by Monson’s family of six, which includes walk-on sophomore guard Maddox Monson.
The Traores have been fasting during daylight hours for the past week in observance of Ramadan, but Monson’s wife, Darci, has been cooking healthy late-night meals and having Maddox deliver them to the Traores so they can eat before sunrise.
“Coach Monson is coaching, but it’s like his whole family are invested too,” Aboubacar Traore said.
Making road games feel like home might be why LBSU has had decent success away from the Walter Pyramid this season, posting nonconference road victories at USC, Michigan and DePaul, wins that looked much better in December before all three finished with sub-.500 records this season.
Long Beach also posted difficult conference road wins at UC Riverside, UC Davis and Cal State Northridge before winning three straight in Henderson.
DUE FOR A WIN?
Long Beach is making its ninth appearance in the NCAA Tournament and its first since 2012, when it lost a first-round game to New Mexico. LBSU has not won an NCAA Tournament game since 1973.