On a night where shots would not land, and the steals were one-sided, Long Beach State men’s basketball suffered a lopsided 72-61 defeat to UC Irvine Thursday night at The Walter Pyramid.
“It’s disappointing to have a great crowd like that and get beat, but I really liked our fight,” head coach Dan Monson said. “I think you know, we just unfortunately didn’t play very well.”
Fresh off a 79-71 win against Hawaii in the ‘Mid’ on Jan. 18, The Beach had improved to 6-1 at home, coming into the game against an inconsistent Anteaters team when playing on the road.
Those inconsistencies were not noticeable in a contest where they dominated in almost every facet of play. Outshooting LBSU by 18% when the game came to a close off the back of a 6-10 night from fifth-year guard Pierre Crockrell II and a 4-9 night from the Anteaters’ leading scorer in the contest graduate guard Dylan Thoerner.
By halftime, The Beach had already dug themselves a hole too deep to overcome trailing 41-24 after shooting just 25% and constantly leaving UCI shooters to get open looks.
Those looks led to 25 three-point attempts and though they landed at a clip just 1% better than The Beach, if more of those looks land, the score quickly gets even uglier.
“So when we make our open shots, do we win? I mean, I think you can play the if game all you want,” Monson said. “I mean, we had them out of rhythm, for some of those in the second half.”
One of the only positive takeaways was from true freshman Varick Lewis who had an encouraging cameo during the second half of the game coming in for nine minutes, shooting 4-5 and putting up the second most points for LBSU on the night with nine.
“It was just nice to have somebody in there that that wasn’t you know, frustrated and mentally, you know, in a bad headspace,” Monson said. “Unfortunately he’s a freshman and hasn’t got as many minutes as you know, with a veteran team.”
It was otherwise an otherwise quiet night from the rest of Long Beach State with the starting five playing particularly underwhelming.
Marcus Tsohonis led the scoring for both teams with 15 points but it came on an unproductive 3-13 performance from the senior where the guard failed to score from inside the three-point arc on all 10 attempts he had.
Lassina and Aboubacar Traore were both held from making it to double-digit rebounds in another contest, a mark neither of the junior forwards has met since the game against UC Riverside on Jan. 6.
The Beach will travel to Riverside for their next game against the Highlanders on Saturday as they look to regain productive performances from the top of the roster.