The562’s coverage of Long Beach State athletics for the 2023-24 season is sponsored by Marilyn Bohl.
The562’s coverage of Long Beach State basketball for the 2023-24 season is sponsored by Nelson Farris.
A week after pushing No. 6 USC into the closing minutes, a different Long Beach State team showed up on Thursday in their BIg West opener against Cal State Fullerton.
The Beach had their worst offensive night of the season in a 67-61 loss to their local rivals, falling below .500 for the first time this year at 5-6 on the campaign.
After the loss, first-year head coach Amy Wright took responsibility for the loss, though she wasn’t exactly shocked that her team didn’t look their best for the first three quarters.
“First I want to apologize to Long Beach State fans, they don’t deserve that type of basketball,” Wright said. “I apologize, I take full blame for it. We’ve had two terrible days of practice, to be very honest, so I knew coming in it was going to be a difficult game … Again, I apologize, I need to be better for them, I need to be better for the fans.”
Long Beach struggled against Fullerton’s zone, which they ran for a majority of the night. The Beach had their lowest shooting night of the season, shooting just 34.3 percent from the floor while going just 5-for-27 (18.5 percent) from beyond the three-point line.
Wright bemoaned her team’s 23 turnovers, but said she was pleased with the shot selection overall.
“I think for the most part, our threes were not contested threes. And that’s what we want is uncontested threes, those just weren’t falling,” she said. “For me, where I could have helped them more was getting touches and collapsing the zone and maybe just giving them a little more time on the kick outs to make those shots.”
After Fullerton scored the first bucket of the night, the Beach responded with a 10-0 run to force a timeout. Sydney Woodley had four of her 14 points during that spurt along with a couple of steals to help the Beach out in front, but it didn’t last long. The Titans scored the final seven points of the quarter, taking the lead back with a buzzer-beater to go up 15-13 after the first 10 minutes.
The Titans continued their run all the way through to the second half, leading by as many as 19 points midway through the third quarter.
Long Beach finally started to put things together in the fourth quarter, playing with a higher sense of urgency and tenacity. The Beach had six steals while forcing 10 turnovers in the final period, outsourcing the Titans 27-16.
Casey Valenti Paea was the standout in that final quarter, scoring nine points and dishing out three assists on her way to a game-high 17 points for the Beach.
“We switched up the defense a little bit, we started trapping ball screens and that created some stuff,” said Wright of what changed in the fourth quarter. “I think that helped us get easy buckets in transition … But again, I’ll take this, it’s on me. I should have switched defenses sooner, I should have switched offenses sooner. I just wanted our team to be in the flow of what we normally do, and it just wasn’t working tonight.”
Even with that 27-point explosion in the fourth quarter, the Beach ended up with their lowest scoring output of the season, just a point shy of the 62 they scored against No. 5 Texas on Dec. 6.
The Beach used an 11-0 run to cut the deficit to 63-58 with 32 seconds left to play, and even trimmed the deficit to just four points with 10 seconds to go, but the Titans were able to sink all four of their free throws in the closing seconds to secure the win.
Fujika Nimmo had 15 points to lead the Titans, who got 14 from Gabi Vidmar and 12 from Eva Levingston. Former Long Beach Poly Jackrabbit Ashlee Lewis had six points and six rebounds for the Titans, playing less than 19 minutes due to persistent foul trouble.
The Beach will look to get back in the win column on Saturday at CSUN, where they’re scheduled for a 2 p.m. contest against the Matadors.
