{"id":210172,"date":"2026-03-08T08:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T08:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/210172\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T08:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T08:57:08","slug":"long-beach-state-finishes-season-with-road-win-at-hawaii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/210172\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach State Finishes Season With Road Win At Hawai\u2019i"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>HONOLULU, Hawaii \u2013 With four minutes to play in the game, <a href=\"https:\/\/longbeachstate.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/roster\/gavin-sykes\/9440\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"9440\" target=\"_blank\">Gavin Sykes<\/a> hit three straight 3-pointers to extend a four-point lead to 13, a phenomenal stretch that helped seal a final win of the season for Long Beach State against Hawai&#8217;i on the road, 84-75.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nHawai&#8217;i (22-8, 14-6 Big West) got off to a strong start, taking a 14-9 lead over the first eight minutes, Long Beach State (10-21, 6-14 Big West) did not let the lead extend any further, as a balanced Beach offense helped chip away. A three from Sykes gave the Beach their first lead, and two more quickly from <a href=\"https:\/\/longbeachstate.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/roster\/shaquil-bender\/9429\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"9429\" target=\"_blank\">Shaquil Bender<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/longbeachstate.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/roster\/isaiah-lewis\/9438\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"9438\" target=\"_blank\">Isaiah Lewis<\/a> keyed a 10-0 run that expanded the LBSU lead to 32-22 with four minutes to play in the first half.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThat lead would hold into the break, and the Beach led 44-34 behind 13 points each from <a href=\"https:\/\/longbeachstate.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/roster\/gavin-sykes\/9440\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"9440\" target=\"_blank\">Gavin Sykes<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/longbeachstate.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/roster\/shaquil-bender\/9429\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"9429\" target=\"_blank\">Shaquil Bender<\/a>.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nHawai&#8217;i made a push as the Beach had a stretch with five turnovers in five minutes, which helped the Rainbow Warriors erase the lead, eventually moving in front 59-55 on a Harry Rouhliadeff 3-point play with 11 minutes to play.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nLong Beach State rallied with a 3-point play of their own from Lewis, taking a 65-60 lead, but Hawai&#8217;i remained within striking distance with just over four minutes to play at 68-64 after a runner from Isaac Finlinson.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThat was when Sykes took over. With the Beach defense holding while LBSU fed the freshman, Sykes answered with three straight 3-pointers to open up a 77-64 lead, and the Beach closed out the win on the road in Hawai&#8217;i 84-75, just the eighth win in Honolulu for the program and the first since 2022.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nSykes finished the season scoring 542 total points to shatter the freshman scoring record in just 28 games played, averaging 19.4 points per game for the season, a mark that will likely rank in the Top 10 in the nation among freshmen.<br \/>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU, Hawaii \u2013 With four minutes to play in the game, Gavin Sykes hit three straight 3-pointers to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-210172","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\/210172","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=210172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}