Quitters never win, so goodbye Long Beach State

Nixon waved his hands and walked off with a smirk that said, It's every man for himself.

After giving up 57 points in the first half, Long Beach gave up 64 in the second. For the final six-plus minutes, the 49ers rarely had more than one player -- senior Kejuan Johnson -- playing hard on defense. That was evident on every Tennessee possession, but if you want a concrete example, fine. Here's your concrete example:

With more than 5½ minutes to play, Tennessee's Ramar Smith dribbled 45 feet from the basket, beat his defender and headed for the rim. Nobody from Long Beach helped. Nobody from Long Beach moved. Smith finished with a tomahawk dunk.

As those final six-plus minutes unfolded in all their infamy, Reynolds made no move to stop what was happening -- and happening on national television, for God's sake. No timeouts. No screaming. No benching. If his players had quit on the court, well, they were only following the lead of their coach.

After the game I asked Reynolds how it felt to watch his team quit. He spoke for about 90 seconds, only at the end bothering to dispute the idea that his players had quit.

"Obviously it was a hard time for our team," he said. "We have a lot of seniors, and those guys, I'm sure, were disappointed ... a little down, a little dead-legged. But I don't know that they quit on defense as much as they were disappointed in what they had done up to that point and the game was kind of out of their reach."

Translation: They quit.

This is a program with issues. The top seven scorers are seniors. There are only three recruits signed. Reynolds' contract is up, and Long Beach's new athletics director, Vic Cegles, hasn't extended it despite Reynolds' 42-20 record the last two seasons. Why? Probably because the NCAA is looking into allegations that Reynolds' recruiting coordinator, associate coach Reggie Howard, has been connected to payment irregularities concerning junior college courses taken by current 49ers Mark Dawson and Johnson and several players not currently in the program.

Cegles told me Friday about the "several" additional players involved in the NCAA's ongoing probe. The involvement of those "several" others, he said, explains why Johnson and Dawson were suspended three games while Howard has been out since Feb. 1.

Cegles won't come out and say it, but he looks and sounds like a man who is fed up with his basketball program and his coach. He watched Friday from behind the Long Beach bench. He watched Reynolds conduct timeouts with dead eyes, head bobbing left and right but rarely making eye contact with any player. He watched Nixon smirk and dismiss his coach early in the second half. He watched the 49ers quit on defense.

Cegles has a mess on his hands. He looked miserable.

Me, I feel better now. And I can promise you this: Until this coach and those players are gone, I'll not think about Long Beach basketball again.