{"id":76208,"date":"2025-12-01T02:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T02:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/76208\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T02:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T02:28:09","slug":"gavin-sykes-historic-night-lifts-long-beach-state-in-win-over-san-diego-the562-org","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/76208\/","title":{"rendered":"Gavin Sykes\u2019 Historic Night Lifts Long Beach State In Win Over San Diego \u2013 The562.org"},"content":{"rendered":"

The562\u2019s coverage of Long Beach State athletics for the 2025-26 season is sponsored by Marilyn Bohl<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With a completely revamped roster the Long Beach State men\u2019s basketball team has been through numerous ebbs and flows early this season as they learn to win.<\/p>\n

The Beach took another step forward Sunday afternoon as they put together a complete game as they defeated San Diego 76-72 at the LBS Financial Credit Union Pyramid.<\/p>\n

All it took was a heads up play on a second-chance opportunity and a defensive stop to catapult the Beach to a victory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Freshman Gavin Sykes wrote his name in the Long Beach State record books as he scored 30 points to help lift the Beach to victory. Sykes is the first true freshman in program history to reach 30 points since Lucious Harris completed the feat in 1990.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The biggest points for Sykes came with the Beach trailing 72-71 with 26 seconds left. LBSU drew up a lob from Petar Mastrorovic to Shay Johnson, but they didn\u2019t connect and Sykes made a heads up play collapsing for the rebound to put it back up for a layup and was fouled to give LBSU a 74-72 lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m actually taught to get back on a shot and this kind of just made sense for me to run in,\u201d Sykes said about his game-winning layup. \u201cI kind of saw two guys go to him and it just didn\u2019t look like the ball was going to go in..my guy wasn\u2019t in front of me. I seen the ball right in front of me \u2013 I just went and got it and they fouled me. That\u2019s a routine layup that I practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following Sykes converting the 3-point play, Isaiah Lewis made a great defensive stop to get his fourth steal of the night and made two free throws at the end to ice the game for LBSU (2-6).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely great knowing that I can get up to the line and knock them down,\u201d Lewis said of making both free throws to put LBSU up 76-72. \u201cIt felt great.\u201d<\/p>\n

San Diego (3-4) didn\u2019t make it easy for the Beach as they went on a 13-2 lead in the first half to wipe away an early lead. The Toreros\u2019 bench kept them in it as they outscored the Beach\u2019s bench 27-9 to take a 38-34 lead at halftime.<\/p>\n

Brendon Benjamin scored a team-high for SD, but the Beach continued to claw back in the second half and tied it at 38 early in the second half.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just excited that tonight they got to feel that it\u2019s worth it, the energy that they\u2019re putting into each other to get to know each other,\u201d Long Beach State coach Chris Acker said. \u201cSo I\u2019m excited for them, I\u2019m excited for Long Beach State, and I\u2019m just hoping that we can continue to move in this direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The win comes at a good time for LBSU as they open Big West contest against UC Santa Barbara on Thursday before hosting defending Big West Champion UC San Diego on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been on the road before,\u201d Acker said. \u201cSo we\u2019re excited to, you know, get on the road and see what we\u2019re made of and see if we can rectify what we\u2019ve been, you, struggling at on the road. Now that we know that we can play in the second half.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The562\u2019s coverage of Long Beach State athletics for the 2025-26 season is sponsored by Marilyn Bohl. With a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-76208","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\/76208","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=76208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}