SAN LUIS OBISPO \u2014 Freshman Gavin Sykes scored 28 points for Long Beach State, but the visitors couldn\u2019t slow down Cal Poly in a 102-92 loss on Thursday night that officially eliminated LBSU from contention for a spot in the Big West Tournament.<\/p>\n
Sykes scored 22 of his points in the second half, including a baseline jumper to move past program legend Lucious Harris for the Long Beach State freshman single-season record. Sykes has 469 points with three games left in the regular season.<\/p>\n
Shaquil Bender added 18 points and five assists and Petar Majstorovic scored 15 for LBSU (8-21 overall, 4-13 Big West), which has lost 10 consecutive games. Rob Diaz III added 11 points and Leopold Levillain contributed eight points and six rebounds.<\/p>\n
Hamad Mousa had 29 points and six rebounds to pace the Mustangs (13-16, 9-8), who secured their spot in next month\u2019s eight-team conference tournament with their fourth straight win. Cayden Ward scored 28 points while shooting 11 for 18 from the field (2 for 8 from 3-point range) to go with nine rebounds and five assists. Jess Esso Essis added a career-high 15 points.<\/p>\n
Long Beach held a 20-18 lead eight minutes into the high-scoring affair, but Cal Poly eventually used a 15-7 run to open a 10-point lead and took a 48-40 advantage to the locker room at halftime.<\/p>\n
A jumper and a 3-pointer from Bender to open the second half cut LBSU\u2019s deficit to three points, but the hosts scored on four of their next five possessions to regain a double-digit lead for the remainder of the night.<\/p>\n
Cal Poly\u2019s shooters and ball security proved too much for Long Beach to overcome. The Mustangs shot 54.3% from the field, made 13 3-pointers and went 21 for 22 from the free-throw line while recording their highest regulation point total since a 102-89 victory at Hawaii in February 2010. Cal Poly had a season-low eight turnovers.<\/p>\n
UP NEXT<\/p>\n
Long Beach State plays at Cal State Bakersfield on Saturday at 6:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
BIG WEST STANDINGS<\/p>\n
Through Thursday, Feb. 26<\/p>\n
Team \u2013 Overall, Big West<\/p>\n
Hawaii \u2013 20-7, 12-5<\/p>\n
UC Irvine \u2013 19-10, 12-5<\/p>\n
Cal State Northridge \u2013 18-11, 11-6<\/p>\n
UC Santa Barbara \u2013 18-11, 11-7<\/p>\n
UC San Diego \u2013 20-9, 10-7<\/p>\n
Cal State Fullerton \u2013 15-14, 10-7<\/p>\n
UC Davis \u2013 17-12, 10-8<\/p>\n
Cal Poly (SLO) \u2013 13-16, 9-8<\/p>\n
Long Beach State \u2013 8-21, 4-13<\/p>\n
UC Riverside \u2013 9-21, 4-14<\/p>\n
Cal State Bakersfield \u2013 8-21, 2-15<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN LUIS OBISPO \u2014 Freshman Gavin Sykes scored 28 points for Long Beach State, but the visitors couldn\u2019t…\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":{"0":"post-196403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-big-west-conference","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-college-sports","11":"tag-long-beach","12":"tag-long-beach-headlines","13":"tag-long-beach-news","14":"tag-long-beach-state-sports","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196403","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=196403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196403\/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=196403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}