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The562’s coverage of Long Beach State men’s basketball for the 2024-25 season is sponsored by Arline & Mike Walter.
This is not what they had planned.
Yet another overtime loss on Thursday at Walter Pyramid was a microcosm of the first season under coach Chris Acker for Long Beach State men’s basketball.
While there were flashes of the defense-first program Acker is trying to build, the Beach struggled in all too familiar ways while falling heartbreakingly short at home. LBSU went the last 10 minutes of regulation without a field goal and couldn’t find the answer in clutch moments during an 88-87 loss to CSU Bakersfield.
This is the 12th consecutive loss for the Beach, including three overtime losses in their last five home games, so it’s apropos for such a loss to officially eliminate LBSU (7-22, 3-14) from the Big West Conference Tournament for the first time since 2004.
When asked if he thinks this disappointing season is a failure, Acker quickly responded, “Absolutely not.”
“With defeat and losing games comes a lot of criticism, people are going to have a lot of things to say, but anybody that understands competition understands that for a team that has the least amount of minutes returning out of anyone in the country… these guys are fighting tooth and nail,” he continued.
Askew, who scored 19 points while surpassing the 1,000 point mark for his collegiate career, was quick to defend his coach at the postgame press conference.
“None of the players look at (Coach Acker) as a failure,” Askew said. “As a player, it’s not a failure of a season. Coach and his coaching staff put everything together in one month. If people understand that’s really hard to become a first-year head coach and do that. To the point he’s gotten us to now, I think that’s success.”
The lead changed hands 15 times and both teams led by as many as nine points, but LBSU’s biggest lead came at the 10 minute mark of the second half before the Beach went without a field goal until overtime.
With the score tied and seconds left in regulation, Askew had the ball for LBSU’s last shot but his shot was blocked at the rim. Then in the final seconds of overtime, CSU Bakersfield guard Jemel Jones drilled a game-winning jump shot from the elbow to beat the buzzer. Jones had a game-high 37 points after being held scoreless for the first seven minutes of the game.
“This is not what we want this to look like moving forward, obviously, but these are the circumstances we are dealing with right now,” Acker said. “There is a very bright future. Our job is to continue to be professional. We’ve got three games left and we’re going to put everything we have into this next game (vs. UC Irvine) and continue to try and move forward.”
“Losing is losing and it’s very tough, but we’re getting better,” Askew added. “And that might sound like a cliche because we are losing. But we’re a first-year team that’s fighting hard out there. As (Coach Acker) said in the locker room, we weren’t down and fighting back, we were in the game the whole time and that’s improvement.”
LBSU guard TJ Wainwright made six of his 10 shots from behind the arc on his way to a team-high 22 points. Askew dished out a game-high eight assists while going 4-for-14 from the field.
In the LBSU front court, Derrick Michael Xzavierro recorded his third double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds, and fellow forward Austin Johnson chipped in 13 points and six rebounds. Andrew Nagy came off the bench to score 14 points.
Bakersfield (13-17, 7-11) is just two spots above LBSU in the Big West standings but looked much more composed down the stretch despite also going through a prolonged stretch without a field goal. In overtime, the Roadrunners were 6-for-8 from the field and 3-for-4 from 3-point range.
LBSU outrebounded CSUB 37-29 while being outscored in the paint 28-22. The Roadrunners shot 48 percent from the field and 52 percent from behind the arc.
“Our margin of error is very slim so every mistake we make is magnified,” Wainwright said. “We’re a first-year team that can’t afford to make mistakes early in the game because those catch up to us late in the game.”
Wainwright was locked in early with a pair of 3-pointers and made his first three attempts from distance. His third put LBSU up 13-7 at the 14 minute mark and it was his 11th point. The junior wouldn’t score again in the half and only took two more shots before the break.
“If you start off hot they’re going to make some defensive adjustments to slow me down,” Wainwright said. “That’s just the flow of the game and it just wasn’t going my way.”
Meanwhile, Corey Stephenson was the go-to scorer for the Roadrunners and he had eight of his team’s first 13 points to keep them in the game.
LBSU was able to maintain its lead thanks in part to the contribution off the bench from Nagy. The freshman scored seven points in 11 minutes of the first half and his 3-pointer from the corner made it 20-15.
Jones took over the rest of the half with 15 points in about nine minutes. His jumper in the final minutes helped the Roadrunners take a 40-33 lead into halftime.
The Beach obviously had a much longer scoreless streaks in the game, but the 3+ minutes without a point right before halftime really changed the shape of the game.
Nothing seemed to change in the second half as Jones went right to the rim for an easy bucket on the first possession. Wainwright countered with a 3-pointer, but Stephenson quickly answered with a three of his own. That gave Bakersfield their biggest lead of the game at 45-36.
With about 15 minutes left in regulation, LBSU’s Kam Martin found Askew in the corner for a 3-pointer that sparked a 7-0 Beach run. On the ensuing Bakersfield possession, Askew stole the ball for a coast-to-coast layup. Then after another stop, Nagy converted an easy layup to take the lead back 50-49.
The teams traded the lead in a one-possession game until Askew’s blocked shot ended in Derrick Michael Xzavierro’s layup at the other end off a nice dish from Wainwright. Askew was hit in the face on the play and he made both technical foul free throws. Johnson then used a strong post move to connect on a hook shot that capped a game-high 11-0 run for the Beach and pushed the lead to 63-54 lead with less than 10 minutes to play.
A key 3-pointer from substitute Marvin McGhee, and a technical foul on the Beach, got the Roadrunners going around at the 8-minute media timeout. McGhee’s baseline dunk after the technical free throws cut the Beach lead to 64-63 and capped a 9-1 Bakersfield run.
While LBSU failed to convert a field goal for the remainder of regulation, Martin free throws ended the visitor’s run and put LBSU up 66-63 with six minutes left. Both teams hit the skids offensively and relied on getting to the charity stripe down the stretch.
Free throws from Bakersfield forward Fidelis Okereke tied the game 68-68 with 2:20 left, and it ended up causing Johnson to foul out.
After a LBSU timeout with 42 seconds left, Okereke committed an unnecessary foul on Xzavierro near the 3-point line as he also fouled out. Xzavierro converted on both of his free throws to put LBSU up 72-70 with 36 seconds on the clock, and the Roadrunners wasted no time to come back down and draw a foul of their own. Kaden Waller tied it again with 32 seconds left.
LBSU called a timeout, and then before inbounding the ball called its last timeout, with 27 seconds left. Acker put the ball in Askew’s hands to just stand at the top of the key as the clock ran down. His baseline drive got him to the bucket but the possible game-winning layup was blocked. LBSU scored four points in the final six minutes of regulation.
“We were trying to get the last shot, and I saw a lane and I attacked the rim and tried to get fouled but not every call is going to be called,” Askew said. “I’ll live with that. I believe in myself no matter what and I’ll take that shot when it’s there.”
The overtime period was an offensive explosion with 31 combined points in the five minutes. Wainwright kicked it off immediately with a 3-pointer on the first possession and LBSU was up 82-78 until Jones and McGhee consecutive buckets put Bakersfield up 83-82.
Askew drilled a 3-pointer, and then on the next possession made free throws to give LBSU a 87-84 lead with less than a minute left in overtime.
Jones took the game over from there with a jumper and then nice defense to get the ball back. With less than 3 seconds on the clock and trailing by one, he took the inbounds pass and drilled a contested jump shot from the elbow to beat the buzzer and win the game.
“Obviously it hurts to lose, but I took this job with a vision, and the vision is that we’re going to do something that hasn’t been done in the history of this program and I stand on that,” Acker said. “I believe that we’re going to do it with the guys who are in this room.”
With three games left in the regular season, LBSU is on pace to match its worst conference record since 2008 in the first year under Dan Monson. The Beach is now the only Big West team in the modern era to go from winning the conference tournament to missing the postseason the following year.
“There’s a big history involved with this program, but (this team) has never been here before,” Acker said. “Now they understand that every team is excited to beat Long Beach State and to win here. Now that they feel that they’ll carry that with them as they move forward. That’s how you create a chip on your shoulder, not just an individual chip but a program chip. You’ve got to go through the dark days to get to the other side to understand how important it is.”
