SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Long Beach State saw its postseason run come to a narrow end on Friday afternoon, falling 4-3 to top-seeded UC Santa Barbara in the Big West Conference Championship semifinals at the Barnes Tennis Center.<\/p>\n
The Beach finishes the season with a 14-11 overall record and a 5-4 mark in conference play, closing the year with one of its most competitive performances against the Gauchos.<\/p>\n
Doubles play set the tone early, as Long Beach State claimed the crucial point with wins on courts one and three. Cecilia Costa<\/a> and Paulina Franco battled through a tight tiebreak to earn a 7-6 (7-3) victory over Ekua Youri and Caroline Beard, while Daisy Carpenter<\/a> and Diana De Simone<\/a> secured a 6-3 decision on court three.<\/p>\n In singles, the match unfolded as a back-and-forth battle that ultimately came down to the final court. UC Santa Barbara picked up straight-set wins at No. 4 and No. 6 to gain momentum, but the Beach responded with key victories from Thea Jagare<\/a> and Pamela Badillo<\/a>. Jagare delivered a resilient three-set win at No. 3, 7-5, 6-7, 6-3, while Badillo controlled her match at No. 5 with a 6-2, 6-4 result.<\/p>\n The decisive moments came at the top of the lineup. Costa dropped a competitive 7-5, 6-4 match at No. 1, and despite De Simone forcing a third-set tiebreak at No. 2 after taking the opening set, UCSB’s Isabella Wong edged out the clinching point with a 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7-4) victory.<\/p>\n With the win, the Gauchos advanced to the championship match, while Long Beach State exits after pushing the conference’s top seed to the brink in a tightly contested semifinal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Long Beach State saw its postseason run come to a narrow end on Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-285993","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\/285993","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=285993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}