Dan Monson

What: "Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel" Where: HBO, tonight, 10-11 One thing you can say about the latest edition of HBO's award-winning sports magazine show is that it is well-balanced. There are two stories dealing with the underbelly of sports--one on a sports agent accused of wrongdoing, another on the academic fraud scandal at the University of Minnesota.

If Long Beach State thinks playing on the road against Pepperdine before a smattering of fans is tough, just wait. There will be far more hostile environments and certainly more daunting opponents ahead. Ever heard of a little place called Cameron Indoor Stadium? The road ahead could be a long and thankless one for the 49ers if their 67-58 victory over Pepperdine on Tuesday night at Firestone Fieldhouse is any indication. Long Beach State (2-0) needed a flourish to finish off the pesky Waves (0-2)

Total rehabilitation is one victory away. A four-year journey for Long Beach State senior Greg Plater can end at a once far-off destination Saturday night at Honda Center. The 49ers survived UC Riverside, and themselves, for a 74-63 victory in the Big West Conference tournament semifinals Friday. They can qualify for the NCAA tournament with a victory Saturday night against the winner of Friday's late game between UC Santa Barbara and Cal State Northridge. That moment was made possible even though the 49ers (22-10)

The NCAA announced a crackdown on bench decorum for the upcoming basketball season Thursday, saying many common behaviors that are deemed unsportsmanlike by officials will be met with technical fouls without warning. Also targeted: Coaches who leave the coaching box, even simply to talk to their players. Coaches will be given one warning, then assessed a technical even if their behavior is not unsportsmanlike. One coach who might need to adjust is UCLA's Ben Howland, who is prone to wandering.

Any college coach likes to see one of his players follow a missed shot by grabbing the rebound and dunking. It was especially nice for UCLA's Ben Howland when he watched forward James Keefe , recovering from a shoulder injury, attack the hoop during an individual workout this week. "I think he's a little better off than was originally feared," Howland said. Speaking to reporters at the team's media day Wednesday, the coach said he will continue to play it safe by limiting Keefe to noncontact drills when practices officially begin Friday.

Long Beach State got along fine playing its first game without senior guard Larry Anderson's 6-foot-5 frame, 14 points per game, defensive skills and leadership. In terms of a test, though, this was only a pop quiz. Top-seeded Long Beach, as expected, cruised past UC Davis, 80-46, in the first round of the Big West tournament Thursday at Honda Center Anderson sat out the game and is presumed out for the weekend after spraining his right knee in last weekend's loss to Cal State Fullerton.

Long Beach State guard Larry Anderson , the Big West Conference's defensive player of the year, will probably miss this week's conference tournament, 49ers Coach Dan Monson said Monday. Anderson, a senior, sustained a sprained medial collateral ligament in his right knee during a game at Cal State Fullerton on Saturday. Fullerton defeated Long Beach, 77-74, handing the 49ers their first loss of the conference season. Long Beach, 22-8 overall, won the Big West regular season with a conference record of 15-1.

Casper Ware has said for four years you can't consider him a truly great college guard unless he leads his team to the NCAA tournament. Consider him, finally, truly great. Ware conducted his own senior Saturday night at the Honda Center, scoring 33 points in leading Long Beach State to a 77-64 win over UC Santa Barbara. The 49ers (25-8) avenged consecutive Big West tournament title-game defeats to the Gauchos to win the conference's automatic NCAA berth. Long Beach fans rushed the court to the band blast of its theme song, "Jesus Christ Superstar," to celebrate the school's first NCAA bid since 2007.

The momentum came suddenly, as quickly as the split seconds it took Isiah Umipig and D.J. Seeley to catch and release three-point shots, back-to-back in the space of about 40 seconds Saturday at Titan Gymnasium. Umipig's three pulled Cal State Fullerton within a point of Long Beach State, and Seeley's gave Fullerton the lead — for good, it turned out. And with that, Long Beach, which had come to Fullerton on Saturday looking for perfection, instead left bruised and beaten.

The last time Steve Alford was in the Big Ten Conference, he was a sharpshooting guard at Indiana. Alford returned Monday as Iowa's new basketball coach. Alford, who guided Southwest Missouri State to the NCAA tournament's Sweet 16, was, as expected, hired to replace Tom Davis, whose contract was not renewed after 13 years in Iowa City. Alford, 34, was a two-time All-American who led the Hoosiers to the NCAA title in 1987 and was the school's No. 2 career scorer with 2,438 points.