LONG BEACH, Calif. —\u00a0The Beach\u00a0showed competitive stretches and continued development in spurts, but UC San Diego controlled the early pace as the Beach fell 75\u201345 on the road.<\/p>\n
LBSU opened the game with a three from Judit Oliva Fernandez<\/a>, yet the Tritons answered with a run that held the Beach scoreless for\u00a0nearly six\u00a0minutes. A late first-quarter three from Brynna Pukis<\/a> broke the drought, and LBSU’s defensive pressure forced more early turnovers in the period even as UCSD built its lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n LBSU’s most complete stretch came in the third, where the Beach opened with a trio of threes from Pukis, Ka, and Oliva Fernandez, sparking a 16-point quarter and giving the offense needed rhythm and spacing. Pukis stayed hot into the fourth, hitting two\u00a0more threes and finishing with 12 points\u00a0on\u00a0the afternoon. Oliva Fernandez added 11 as a steady perimeter presence, and Ka delivered\u00a0timely\u00a0plays at both ends, contributing nine.<\/p>\n Defensively, the Beach generated multiple runs of stops, forced UCSD into its lowest-scoring quarter in the fourth, and created transition opportunities that reflected improved ball movement and control.<\/p>\n Though the comeback effort\u00a0didn’t\u00a0close the gap, Long Beach State played with more confidence and cohesion after halftime, found production across the roster, and continued to show signs of the style and execution it aims to build as Big West play moves forward.<\/p>\n The Beach look to bounce back next week, hosting Portland in the Pyramid on\u00a0Thursday, December 11.\u00a0Tip off\u00a0is set for 6 p.m.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONG BEACH, Calif. —\u00a0The Beach\u00a0showed competitive stretches and continued development in spurts, but UC San Diego controlled the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-84420","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\/84420","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=84420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}