{"id":196154,"date":"2026-02-27T07:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T07:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/196154\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T07:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T07:25:08","slug":"cal-poly-secures-big-west-championship-spot-with-thursday-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/196154\/","title":{"rendered":"Cal Poly Secures Big West Championship Spot with Thursday Win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">SAN LUIS OBISPO \u2013 Hamad Mousa finished with a game high 29 points and Cayden Ward matched his career best with 28 Thursday evening as the Cal Poly men\u2019s basketball program clinched a spot in the 2026 Big West Championship with a 102-92 victory against Long Beach State inside Mott Athletics Center.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Freshman Jess Esso Essis enjoyed a career high 15 points for Cal Poly (13-16, 9-8), which extended its winning streak to four straight after sinking 13 three-pointers, shooting 95.5 (21-for-22) percent from the free throw line and recording its highest regulation point total since a 102-89 victory at Hawai\u2019i on Feb. 20, 2010.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Ward added a game high nine rebounds for Cal Poly, which matched a season low with just eight turnovers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Cal Poly\u2019s Thursday victory confirmed all eight Big West Championship programs \u2013 with three regular season matchups remaining. Long Beach State (8-21, 4-13) was eliminated from postseason contention with the loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Thursday\u2019s matchup featured 10 lead changes during the opening 10-and-a-half minutes before a jumper from sophomore Guzman Vasilic handed Cal Poly a 29-27 edge. Cal Poly then produced a 15-7 run to go up by double digits with three minutes remaining in the half.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN LUIS OBISPO \u2013 Hamad Mousa finished with a game high 29 points and Cayden Ward matched his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-196154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196154","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=196154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}