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 is sponsored by CSULB Distinguished Alumnus Nelson Farris.
The562’s coverage of Long Beach State men’s basketball for the 2024-25 season is sponsored by Arline & Mike Walter.
There’s not much going right for Long Beach State men’s basketball these days.
Consecutive home losses have exposed glaring weaknesses and leaves the Beach near the bottom of the Big West standings headed into the second round of conference play. They’re also not playing in their usual home gym.
The low point of the season was Saturday at the auxiliary Gold Mine where Cal State Fullerton (6-14, 1-7) came to pick up its first conference win of the season 83-67.
“When your back is against the wall it is fight or flight and Fullerton fought tonight,” LBSU coach Chris Acker said. “They did a tremendous job driving us and making plays for each other. They made big play after big play and we had no answers.”
The bright spot for LBSU (7-12, 3-4) was guard TJ Wainwright who scored a career-high 31 points. He had 10 of the 20 field goals made for the Beach and three of the five made 3-pointers.
“They were more desperate and they came out a lot more hungry, more physical and they just wanted it more than we did, which is unfortunate because we did prepare really hard for this game,” Wainwright said. “But I’ve still got faith in this team to bounce back.”
The Gold Mine hosted its second straight game because part of the suspended ceiling over the loading dock on the south entrance of Walter Pyramid collapsed earlier this week. LBSU Athletic Director Bobby Smitheran said it will be at least another week until any event can be hosted there.
“The next week will be about what’s the approach to the improvements,” Smitheran said. “Are we taking one entrance down at a time? Or is this something that will be a temporary fix or a more long range fix once seasons come to an end in the spring? The structure itself is sound. This was a cosmetic ceiling that fell. So we need to address some cosmetic pieces of it.”
Smitheran added that Beach Building Services have been very helpful, and the MHP Structural Engineers enlisted by the university as the Campus Master Consulting Structural Engineers are currently working to source whatever materials they’ll need to repair the damage.
“We’re having all observations and recommendations being peer reviewed by our CSU Seismic Peer Reviewer which sits on the CSU Seismic Peer Review Board,” Smitheran said.
Acker dismissed any notion that the venue change could be a reason for the recent performances.
“It’s our job to put a product on the floor and perform as players and win games,” Acker said. “We have to figure out a way to do that regardless of the venue, the atmosphere and what’s going on.”
LBSU went on the road and beat Fullerton by 17 points back in December, so the loss on Saturday was all the more surprising. However, the statistics told the story. The Titans were a season-best 8/14 from 3-point range while the Beach turned the ball over 24 times. Only nine of those miscues were counted as Fullerton steals.
Point guard Devin Askew came into the game averaging over 18 points a game, but was limited to 3/12 shooting. He didn’t have any points in the first half and finished with 11.
“I think teams are doing a good job scouting,” Acker said. “As we get better individually our guys are going to learn that you have to have other things to go to. (Askew) be good, he’ll make his adjustments moving forward. He is a heck of a player, and we depend on him a lot to lead us. I’m sure he’ll have a great bounce back game.”
Fullerton took an early lead thanks to a 10-0 run as the Titans connected on their first five shots from behind the arc to build a double digit lead.
Wainwright was fantastic working the baseline with a few acrobatic finishes at the rim, but there was a stretch in the middle of the first half that saw Donovan Oday answer each Wainwright bucket with one of his own. Oday finished with a team-high 24 points.
Fullerton led 40-29 at halftime, and the first minutes of the second half reiterated the story as the Titans pulled away. Askew was called for traveling on the first possession out of the locker room, and Fullerton broke the LBSU press with a 3-pointer from Zion Richardson. Askew’s errant pass went out of bounds on the ensuing possession, and then Oday made consecutive layups to push the lead to 47-29. Fullerton led by as many as 23 points in the second half.
Acker said that it will be important this week to check in with all of his players as they prepare to visit Cal State Northridge and Cal Poly next week.
“We need to get a sense of where they’re at mentally and what they’re thinking,” Acker said. “We have to do a good job communicating with them and figuring out what they’re seeing and what they’re struggling with and simplify things even more if we have to.”
