NORTHRIDGE \u2014 Long Beach State freshman Gavin Sykes is already one of the top young scorers in the nation, but he took things to a new level on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Sykes scored a career-high 34 points on Saturday to lead LBSU to an 87-80 victory over Cal State Northridge at the Matadome. Sykes, who shot 8 for 18 from the field (3 for 9 from 3-point range), scored 24 of his points in the second half and made all but one of his 16 free throws as Long Beach (8-11 overall, 4-3 Big West) won its third straight game and handed CSUN its first home loss of the season.<\/p>\n
Rob Diaz III scored 18 points on 6-of-9 shooting (4 for 6 from 3-point range) and grabbed a team-best six rebounds for Long Beach, which now finds itself in a four-way tie for third place in the conference standings. Petar Majstorovic scored 14 points.<\/p>\n
Larry Hughes Jr. scored 21 to pace CSUN (11-9, 4-4). James Evans Jr. added 17 points, Josh O\u2019Garro had 15 points and 14 rebounds, and Josiah Davis finished with 13 points and 10 assists.<\/p>\n
Long Beach fell behind early, with Majstorovic and Leopold Levillain each whistled for two fouls in the opening minutes. Trailing 27-22 with just under eight minutes left in the first half, Coach Chris Acker reinserted his French big men and LBSU went on a 13-2 run to take a 35-30 lead. Long Beach went cold after that, and the Matadors closed the half on an 8-0 run for a 38-35 advantage.<\/p>\n
Hughes was fouled on the first possession of the second half and hit three free throws to push the CSUN lead to 41-35, but LBSU answered.<\/p>\n
Diaz hit two quick 3-pointers to close the gap, then Majstorovic made one from the corner to tie the score at 46-all. Diaz and Sykes then combined for two more back-to-back 3-pointers as Long Beach took a 54-50 lead.<\/p>\n
CSUN used a 9-2 run to regain the lead at 67-65 with just over eight minutes remaining, but a Dallas Washington putback on missed free throw from Bender put the visitors back in front.<\/p>\n
Sykes took control from there. He made two 3-pointers for a 77-71 lead with 3:43 left. CSUN made one final push, pulling within 77-76 and still trailing just 79-76 with 1:24 left. However, after drawing a foul, Hughes missed the front end of a 1-and-1 at the free throw line, and Sykes answered with a traditional three-point play for an 82-76 lead with 59 seconds lef.<\/p>\n
The Matadors got within 83-80 on a Mahmoud Fofana putback layup with 24 seconds left, but Sykes hit two clutch free throws moments later to help secure the win. CSUN missed its final four shots, three from 3-point range.<\/p>\n
Sykes scored 16 of the last 19 points for Long Beach, which outscored CSUN 52-42 in the second half.<\/p>\n
LBSU shot 46.6% from the field, 10 for 30 from 3-point range and 23 for 28 from the free-throw line and held an 18-9 advantage in fast-break points. CSUN shot 40.9% overall, 5 for 19 from behind the arc and 21 for 29 from the free-throw line while outrebounding Long Beach 43-32.<\/p>\n
UP NEXT<\/p>\n
LBSU plays at Cal State Fullerton on Thursday at 7 p.m. before hosting UC Santa Barbara next Saturday at 4 p.m. at the Pyramid.<\/p>\n
CSUN has Thursday off then plays at Hawaii next Saturday at 9 p.m. PT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NORTHRIDGE \u2014 Long Beach State freshman Gavin Sykes is already one of the top young scorers in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[29668,4213,1327,131,133,132,26758,127],"class_list":["post-138602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-big-west-conference","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-long-beach-state-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}