BAKERSFIELD \u2014 Freshman Gavin Sykes scored a career-high 39 points, including the game-winning basket in the closing seconds, as Long Beach State edged Cal State Bakersfield, 88-87, on Saturday night to snap a 10-game losing streak.<\/p>\n
Sykes started the game white hot, making his first eight shots and scoring 20 points in the first eight minutes as Long Beach (9-21 overall, 5-13 Big West) opened a 27-14 lead.<\/p>\n
Bakersfield (8-22, 2-16) battled back behind a big effort from Ronald Jessamy (33 points, 11 rebounds, three steals). Long Beach held a 29-20 with just under 10 minutes left in the first half, but the Roadrunners used an 11-0 run to recover from Sykes\u2019 early barrage. The teams remained close the rest of the half, and LBSU\u2019s Christian Jones made a half-court shot to beat the halftime buzzer for a 44-43 lead.<\/p>\n
Cole Farrell heated up for Long Beach in the second half, hitting three 3-pointers to help keep the visitors in front. LBSU shot 67% from the field in the second half, but Bakersfield kept pace partly due to a 23-7 free-throw disparity after halftime.<\/p>\n
Long Beach led by three with three minutes left, then a Sykes 3-pointer, two free throws and a pair of defensive stops gave the visitors an 86-78 lead with 1:40 left. The scrappy Roadrunners battled back, forcing three turnovers and converting them into points to cut the margin to 86-85 with 44 seconds left.<\/p>\n
LBSU\u2019s Leopold Levillain missed the front end of a one-and-one free-throw opportunity, then Jessamy made his 10th and 11th free throws to give Bakersfield the lead with 32 seconds to play. Sykes responded, scoring on a drive with seven seconds left to put his team back in front, and a last 3-point attempt from the Roadrunners\u2019 CJ Hardy was no good.<\/p>\n
Petar Majstorovic finished with 12 points and seven rebounds for Long Beach, while Rob Diaz III added 10 points off the bench. Levillain contributed seven points, a team-high 13 rebounds and three steals.<\/p>\n
Sykes shot 14 for 21 from the field (4 for 6 from 3-point range) and 7 for 8 from the free-throw line. His 39-point effort was tied for the eighth-most in program history alongside another program legend, Ed Ratleff. Sykes also became the 32nd player in Long Beach State history to score 500 points in a season.<\/p>\n
Hardy finished with 19 points, six assists and five steals for Bakersfield, which has lost 13 consecutive games, the fourth-longest streak in the nation behind Air Force (22), VMI (16) and Kansas City (14). Tom Mark added 17 points and two steals.<\/p>\n
Long Beach shot 61% from the field overall and 9 for 16 from 3-point range. The Roadrunners hot 53% overall but just 3 for 10 from behind the arc.\u00a0Bakersfield shot 30 for 44 from the free-throw line compared to 13 for 20 for Long Beach.<\/p>\n
UP NEXT<\/p>\n
Long Beach State hosts UC Davis in its final home game of the season on Thursday at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n
BIG WEST STANDINGS<\/p>\n
Through Saturday, Feb. 28<\/p>\n
Team \u2013 Overall, Big West<\/p>\n
Hawaii \u2013 21-7, 13-5<\/p>\n
UC Irvine \u2013 20-10, 13-5<\/p>\n
UC San Diego \u2013 21-9, 11-7<\/p>\n
Cal State Northridge \u2013 18-12, 11-7<\/p>\n
UC Santa Barbara \u2013 18-12, 11-8<\/p>\n
UC Davis \u2013 17-12, 10-8<\/p>\n
Cal State Fullerton \u2013 15-15, 10-8<\/p>\n
Cal Poly (SLO) \u2013 13-17, 9-9<\/p>\n
Long Beach State \u2013 9-21, 5-13<\/p>\n
UC Riverside \u2013 10-21, 5-14<\/p>\n
Cal State Bakersfield \u2013 8-22, 2-16<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAKERSFIELD \u2014 Freshman Gavin Sykes scored a career-high 39 points, including the game-winning basket in the closing seconds,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152,29668,4213,1327,26758,127],"class_list":["post-199092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-big-west-conference","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-long-beach-state-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199092","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=199092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199092\/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=199092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}