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The location changed but the struggles remained the same for Long Beach State men’s basketball on Thursday when they hosted UC San Diego.
A facility issue at Walter Pyramid forced LBSU to move the game to the old Gold Mine gym but the Beach was still unable to find their shooting rhythm or defensive cohesion in an 80-54 loss to UC San Diego.
The win keeps the Tritons (15-3, 5-1) in second place in the Big West Conference standings and the loss drops the Beach (7-11, 3-3) into a four-way tie for sixth.
LBSU only scored 23 points in the first half and made 23 of its 59 shots while Varick Lewis (12 points) Devin Askew (11 points) and Cam Denson (10 points) were the only double digit scorers.
“Hats off to UCSD, they make you play a certain way and they’ve done a great job of making teams uncomfortable,” LBSU coach Chris Acker said. “You have to be mentally tough to withstand how they play defensively.”
Meanwhile, UCSD shot 58 percent from the field and connected on nine of its 19 shots from 3-point range. Guard Tyler McGhie scored a game-high 26 points and the Tritons defense was active with 11 steals.
“Defensively, we’ve actually narrowed it down and tried to simplify it because we just don’t have the capability to switch things up the way we’d like to,” Acker said. “Tonight we just weren’t all on the same page. We were distracted and didn’t have a lot of synergy defensively.”
LBSU hung tough with UCSD in the early going, and around the 12 minute mark Askew delivered a perfect pass to Derrick Michael Xzavierro for a baseline dunk that got the Gold Mine crowd of 1,478 going. However, the Tritons answered in kind with a thunderous dunk from Justin Rochelin at the other end. That was a theme of the night as UCSD answered every push from LBSU with bigger and better play.
“A lot of times we’re making plays and then we have a lapse for a second and we don’t understand how to convert the other way,” Acker said.
The Beach only trailed by five at the midpoint of the first half thanks to three consecutive stops on the defensive end. But the next three UCSD possessions were easy buckets for McGhie. That was part of a 10-0 run for the Tritons who led 38-23 at halftime.
Lewis was a spark off the bench for LBSU with the only four made 3-pointers for the home team on his way to a career-high 12 points. But as was the theme of the night, UCSD answered all four of those made 3-pointers with buckets of their own.
Acker knows his team needs to be realistic in preparation for its next game at home on Saturday against Cal State Fullerton at 4 p.m.
“We need to be real with what we’re watching and what we saw (during film sessions),” Acker said.
The location of that game is yet to be determined because of the issues at Walter Pyramid after a suspended ceiling collapse in the loading dock area. No one was injured but the game was moved, “Out of an abundance of caution,” according to LBSU Athletic Director Bobby Smitheran.
Smitheran added that engineers will confirm the safety of the structure before any decision is made about playing games at Walter Pyramid.
