49ers Set Tone of Night Before Opening Tipoff

A 30-second snippet of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech preceded the national anthem before the Long Beach State men’s basketball game at the Pyramid Saturday night.

This is not a regular feature of the Long Beach State pregame show, but school officials thought it appropriate, seeing that New Mexico State was in town.

“It speaks to the issue of not wanting to resort to hatred and bitterness,” Long Beach Athletic Director Dave O’Brien explained. “It kind of set a tone for what we wanted to create tonight.”

Besides the always-important Big West Conference victory, what Long Beach State sought to create Saturday night was a vitriol-free atmosphere. No slurs from the stands, no unidentified objects flying toward the New Mexico State bench, no hostile retaliation for the ugly “grease board incident” of Jan. 22 and its aftermath--those were the objectives beyond the scoreboard on this evening.

So, eight extra security guards were hired for the occasion, three of the beefiest positioned near or behind the Aggie bench, with one 300-pounder sitting back to back to New Mexico State Coach Neil McCarthy.

Three extra police officers were also assigned to the event, stationed at strategic points around the Pyramid.

At halftime, the student body presidents of both universities shook hands at midcourt and exchanged T-shirts bearing the school colors.

And after the game, McCarthy and Long Beach Coach Seth Greenberg managed to shake hands, too.

This was not quite Hands Across America, but as olive branches go, this is about as close as McCarthy and Greenberg are ever going to get.

An anonymous piece of anti-Semitic scrawl on the grease board in Greenberg’s locker room before the 49er-Aggie game of Jan. 22 had driven a wedge between the two schools and chilled the always-cool relationship between the coaches to glacial conditions.

Greenberg reacted emotionally, lashing out against not only the gutless perpetrators, but also New Mexico State and New Mexico, the state.

McCarthy reacted condescendingly, wondering aloud if Greenberg’s overwrought state could be attributed to the recent death of Greenberg’s father.

New Mexico State reacted callously, sending Greenberg of “letter of apology” that chastised the coach for “impugning” the college and the good name of a fine America state. O’Brien called it “less a letter of apology and more a position paper.”

Greenberg then sent of his own letter of apology, to the two New Mexico State students he had thrown out of the Jan. 22 game for alleged racial slurs directed at Long Beach players. The students, claiming they were wrongly accused, had contacted Long Beach State hinting about possible legal action.

“This whole incident would be a good case study for a public relations class,” said Steve Shutt, New Mexico State assistant athletic director in charge of media relations.

Leading up the basketball rematch, Shutt said he received “vague [phone] threats about what might happen when we came to Long Beach.” Consequently, security guards were hired for both of the Aggies’ practice sessions at the Pyramid, Greenberg sent a letter to a Long Beach campus newspaper requesting good behavior from fans attending the game and O’Brien planned a feel-good pregame show, which was supposed to included two laser beam hands--one representing Long Beach, the other New Mexico State--embracing on the Pyramid floor.

But when the Long Beach players jogged onto the court prematurely for a group high-five, “we had to kill the laser show,” O’Brien said. “Otherwise,” he joked, “we might have fried some Long Beach State players.”

Beyond the final score--a 73-57 whipping by the 49ers--and a few pink and yellow oblong balloons waved menacingly in the direction of the Aggie bench, retaliation by Long Beach was kept to a minimum.

“I’m proud of our fans,” Greenberg said afterward. “The bottom line of this night is that they acted the way I expected. Our crowds are not crazies, anyway. And, 99.99% of all fans are like that.

“We’re not condemning every fan who sat in the stands at New Mexico State that night. It was one guy. One person, or two, who got into our locker room . . .

“I’m not a person who plans out what he says. I speak from the heart. I’m a pretty emotional guy. What I said was meant more to be a statement on society than New Mexico State.

“That was one isolated, isolated incident. This is no rivalry, because of what happened in Las Cruces. To me, these are two pretty good programs with players that play hard. And now, it’s time for both programs to move on.”