And I missed it?

Sigh. Well, at least I caught up to it, here in Abu Dhabi. Three weeks later.

I grew up in Long Beach. I went to Long Beach State. I edited the student newspaper there. And I have been following Long Beach State basketball since I was a sophomore in high school — from the moment that Jerry Tarkanian showed up at Long Beach in the fall of 1968 and soon turned the 49ers into the best West Coast college basketball team that wasn’t named UCLA.

But even though Long Beach State gave the Bruins — at the height of their powers –  some real trouble in the NCAA playoffs, they never could get past them.

Until last month. When they thrashed the Big Bad Bruins 79-68 at the 76 Classic at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Finally!

Long Beach State played UCLA in three consecutive seasons, back when John Wooden Was King. It was, arguably, Long Beach’s shot at national sports prominence. For both the school and the city.

It didn’t quite work out, and I have always wondered what might have been.

I watched Long Beach State play all the time, back then. And I wasn’t even going to school there yet. My friends and I would drive downtown, to the spacious Long Beach Arena, and watch them crush whatever team Tark could lure into the gym.

I invested tremendous emotional energy in that program. It was something the city could hang its hat on, the flashy, cocky guys in brown and gold who won 120 games in five season.

Anyway.

Tarkanian’s second team got into the NCAA Tournament and faced three-time defending NCAA champion UCLA in the West Regional finals. A big moment. But The Beach got crushed, 88-65, by the Sidney Wicks/Curtis Rowe/Henry Bibby Bruins. The Niners just weren’t ready.

The 49ers were back the next season, and in the 1971 West Regional title game they were up by 11 points in the second half. I still remember seeing the game on television. I was giddy, because I had seen those 49ers play at least a dozen times, in person. But I also was nervous because it was, after all, UCLA … and it seemed as if Long Beach State would not be allowed to defeat the Bruins.

Tark’s famous 1-2-2 zone perplexed the Bruins, who shot only 23 percent from the field. But when star swingman Ed Ratleff fouled out, the 49ers couldn’t hold on, eventually losing 57-55 to the Wicks/Rowe Bruins. UCLA went on to win its fifth consecutive national championship.

Long Beach State was back in 1972, but this time they ran into a Bill Walton team in the regional final, and it was hardly a fair fight. UCLA won 73-57 — en route to consecutive title No. 6.

In 1973, the 49ers were 26-2 and apparently headed for another West Regional final showdown with the Bruins … but were upset in the semifinals by San Francisco, 77-67. Which was perhaps just as well, because UCLA destroyed USF (Walton was a junior then), 54-39.

OK. Now, this may be very hard to imagine, for 98 percent of SoCal college basketball fans, especially four decades later … but in Long Beach during that four-year span … UCLA was The Big Bully of SoCal college basketball. They were the established, arrogant kings of college basketball who seemed intent on not allowing any program to rise up as a potential rival. Not in their backyard. Especially not a team perceived to be as low-rent as Tark’s all-star JC transfers. But it wasn’t just UCLA disdain … there was also some fear there. I was convinced of it then … and now.

The Bruins refused to play Long Beach in the regular season, even when any games between them would have been big events and great tests. They rarely deigned even to acknowledge the 49ers. And it got worse.

The NCAA soon was on the trail of Jerry Tarkanian. Tark was no saint, but in Long Beach it was considered indisputable fact that 1) UCLA sicced the NCAA dogs on Long Beach and 2) UCLA wasn’t exactly squeaky clean itself. Wooden might have been, but there were movers and shakers and fixers (does the name “Sam Gilbert” ring a bell?) around the program who were a bit slippery, themselves.

Tark bolted for Las Vegas, just ahead of the NCAA posse, after the 1972-73 season, and Long Beach was hit with sanctions. The 49ers were not allowed to play in the 1974 NCAAs, which was unfortunate because that team, coached by Lute Olson, went 24-2, defeated then-No.3-ranked Marquette in a raucous game at the Long Beach Arena (yes, I was there, up in the rafters) and had some serious college basketball players in the Pondexter brothers (Cliff and Roscoe), center Leonard Gray and Bob Gross and Glenn McDonald. That team was good. And big (6-4, 6-6, 6-6,  6-7 and 6-8). All of those guys, aside from Roscoe Pondexter, played in the NBA, and Gross and McDonald got NBA championship rings.

Could they have hung with Walton’s senior-season UCLA team? I believe they could have. We will never know.

Eventually, the sanctions wore down Long Beach State’s program, and the 49ers have never really been back (aside from a few nice moments during the Seth Greenberg era), and UCLA eventually deemed it safe to play the 49ers, knocking them around every two or three years.

Long Beach State was 0-11 against the Bruins when they got them last month … and trashed them. (I love to write that. Trashed them.)

Of course, UCLA has major problems. The Bruins are 3-7, and respect for The Beach is still hard to come by.  When UCLA’s center quit the program not long after the Long Beach defeat, the L.A. Times wrote that the kid left out of disgust after UCLA lost to “the likes of Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Long Beach.”

The likes of …?

Well, anyway, it came four decades too late to make a real difference, but Long Beach State finally took the measure of the Bruins. Now I can die in peace.

It would be nice, though, if the 49ers could humble the Bruins (or even beat them by a point) in a game that really matters. When both teams are ranked. In the NCAAs, maybe.

For now … I’ll take 79-68 in the seventh-place game of a tournament in Anaheim, 22 days ago.