CS Long Beach, 34-Point Loser Saturday, Stuns No. 1 Kansas : College basketball: The 49ers shoot 62.8% to win, 64-49, after losing to Virginia Commonwealth, 95-61. Harris has 24 points.

By PAUL McLEOD

Jan. 26, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

LAWRENCE, Kan. — Frustrated and confused, its top 25 rating out the window, Cal State Long Beach limped into town for its Monday night game against top-ranked Kansas.

Vivid memories of a 34-point loss two days earlier to Virginia Commonwealth--a game during which it shot 34% and committed 25 turnovers--still haunted the players as they stepped onto the floor at Allen Fieldhouse.

“We were so embarrassed about the way we played. We didn’t want that to happen again,” junior point guard Jeff Rogers said. “I think that embarrassment led us to play well tonight.”

Now, it’s the Jayhawks (16-2) who are embarrassed. Long Beach (14-3) held them to their fewest points of the season while shooting 62.8% to win, 64-49, before a disbelieving crowd of 15,800.

The 49ers’ season-best shooting ended a 14-game home-court winning streak for the Jayhawks, who were coming off an 82-51 Big Eight victory Saturday at Colorado, their seventh in a row overall.

Long Beach, meanwhile, might have scored the biggest victory in school history, taking nothing away from its 101-94 home victory Jan. 7 that ended Nevada Las Vegas’ 29-game winning streak.

“These kids have been through some hellish times,” third-year 49er Coach Seth Greenberg said after receiving a water bucket dousing from jubilant players in the locker room.

“I was an assistant at the Final Four (with Virgina in 1984) and I have never had a greater feeling than I’m having just now.”

Faced with intense defensive pressure from the 49ers on the perimeter, the nation’s best field-goal shooting team made only 10 of 25 attempts during the first 20 minutes, and 22 of 52 for the game (42.3%), nearly 14 points below its average. Kansas made only five of 16 free throws and none of its nine three-point attempts.

Long Beach, meanwhile, made 15 of 20 shots from the field en route to a 35-21 halftime lead. The 49ers expanded the lead to as many as 21 points during the second half, then spread the floor and worked patiently for shots--something the team, which averages 80 points, never has done well.

“We haven’t been able to hold the ball that long. Never do I remember holding it for 30 seconds at a time. It’s kind of hard,” said senior guard Lucious Harris, who scored 24 points and in the process became the 49ers’ career scoring leader, surpassing Michael Wiley.

Harris, a four-year starter, has scored 1,975 points and is expected to break the Big West Conference scoring record before the season is over. He made 10 of 17 shots Monday night.

Kansas Coach Roy Williams said he couldn’t remember a time when a team shot so well in the Jayhawks’ field house, or a game in which his team played so poorly. It was the worst loss Williams has suffered in his five years here, a stretch during which he has won 119 of 151 games.

“I tried to tell the players to just imagine how good they would be if they had to come in here and had just been beaten by 30 points,” said Williams about his pregame talk in which he worried out loud that the Jayhawks were taking the 49ers too lightly. You fear these games when you’re not mentally prepared. We weren’t ready to play tonight, but I give credit to Long Beach State. They bounced back from Saturday night.”

Said Harris of the victory: “Hopefully, that woke us up.”

Harris, a four-year starter, and Jayhawk guard Adonis Jordan attended Cleveland High in Reseda. Kansas recruited Harris heavily, but Harris chose to follow Cleveland Coach Bobby Braswell to Long Beach, when Braswell was hired as an assistant. Braswell is now an assistant at Oregon.

“We were just so embarrassed against VCU,” Harris said of the 95-61 loss to the Rams on Saturday, a team many of the 49ers said they had not even heard of. “To go in there and let them destroy us like that. We decided to come in here tonight and have no let-ups.”

Long Beach embarked on a four-game coast-to-coast swing eight days ago with its first national ranking in nearly two decades--25th in the Associated Press poll. But it blew a 22-6 lead at UC Santa Barbara and lost, 61-60, Jan. 18, then returned home for a 72-58 victory over Cal State Fullerton. Then came Saturday’s disaster.

“They’ve (Kansas) got to know that’s what it means to be the No. 1 team in the nation.” said CSLB center Chris Tower. “Everyone is going to come in here and go after them.”