LONG BEACH \u2014 Balanced scoring, dominance on the glass and a 56-point second half propelled the Long Beach State men\u2019s basketball team to an 87-54 rout of overmatched Nobel University on Wednesday night at the Walter Pyramid. LBSU\u2019s first win of the season put an end to a 19-game losing streak that dated to an 84-73 win at UC Davis on Jan. 11 of last season.<\/p>\n
Petar Majstorovic had 12 points and six rebounds to pace Long Beach (1-4), while Leopold Levillain, Gavin Sykes, and Christian Jones each scored 10 points on a night when 12 LBSU players logged extended minutes (15 minutes or more).<\/p>\n
Derrick Michael Xzavierro grabbed a season-high seven rebounds as Long Beach crushed its smaller NCCAA opponent on the boards (46-27) and forced 21 turnovers in the first game of the three-day Battle at the Beach event.<\/p>\n
LBSU never trailed and had a 12-2 lead eight minutes into the game. Long Beach stretched its advantage to 23-10 on a Cole Farrell basket, but Nobel (1-5) made its strongest push of the night and used a 10-2 run to cut the margin to five points.<\/p>\n
Long Beach led 31-24 at halftime, then broke the game open in the second half. The hosts shot 50% from the field (18 for 36) and from 3-point range (6 for 12) after the break, building a 21-point gap on an inside basket from Levillain with 11:44 left and going ahead by 35 in the closing minutes.<\/p>\n
Former Nobel player Immanuel Lewis made his LBSU debut during the latter portion of the game, playing seven minutes and making a 3-point shot for a 79-45 lead in the final minutes.<\/p>\n
Long Beach shot 46% for the night and used its rebounding advantage to attempt 18 more shots than Nobel, which shot 38% (19 for 50) overall and 2 for 7 from 3-point range. LBSU outscored Nobel 48-28 in the paint and had significant advantages in fast-break points (14-1) and points off turnovers (20-9).<\/p>\n
Mykale Mundy had 15 points and five rebounds for Nobel, while Kevin Hymes added 11 points and four rebounds. Caleb Palmer had nine points and seven rebounds.<\/p>\n
UP NEXT<\/p>\n
Long Beach hosts Montana State on Friday at 7 p.m. to close the Battle at the Beach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONG BEACH \u2014 Balanced scoring, dominance on the glass and a 56-point second half propelled the Long Beach…\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":["post-61753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-big-west-conference","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-long-beach-state-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61753","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=61753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61753\/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=61753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}