By LA JOLLA – Long Beach State men’s basketball took its 14th consecutive loss Thursday night at LionTree Arena against NCAA tournament hopefuls, UC San Diego.
With the 70-63 win, the Tritons clinched their first-ever regular season Big West title in program history.
Despite The Beach’s daunting losing streak, which began in mid-January and has stretched into March, a short-handed LBSU put themselves in a position to be competitive against a UC San Diego team that is in contention for an at large bid to the NCAA Tournament. This feat is a rare accomplishment for a Big West team.
As senior guard Devin Askew’s rainbow threes found the bottom of the net down the stretch, The Beach was able to get the deficit to as low as six points after the Tritons had seemingly put things away by leading by as much as 22 at one point in the second half.
“It’s always fun, even through the struggles and everything, you know, I’ve been through a lot of struggles, so I just reminded myself to smile and it’s just a basketball game at the end,” Askew said.
With junior guard TJ Wainwright sidelined with an injury, Askew carried the burden of serving as LBSU’s sole offense generator, with only sophomore forward Derrick Michael Xzavierro (DMX) joining him in double figures with 11 points.
UCSD entered Thursday’s game as the Division I leader in turnover margin (7.5) and that played a pivotal role in creating separation as the first half concluded. The Tritons won the turnover battle in the game 20-6 and outscored The Beach 21-3 in points off those turnovers.
The final two minutes of the first half are when things soured for LBSU; being down only three points quickly inflated to 10 courtesy of a 10-3 UC San Diego run to end the half.
A thunderous alley-oop to redshirt junior Justin Rochelin over DMX caused an eruption from the student section as well as a technical foul that was assessed to Rochelin for taunting.
After keeping UCSD’s senior guard/forward Tyler McGhie relatively quiet in the first half, the sharpshooter, who’s fifth in the nation in threes made per game, found just enough separation as the clock dwindled to heave a three-ball in at the buzzer to end the first half.
From there, the floodgates opened from beyond the arc for McGhie and the Triton backcourt, going on a 12-2 run thanks to fluid ball movement that led to open shots to start the second half.
The tandem of McGhie and senior guard/forward Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones combined for 40 points.
“[UCSD] obviously had senior night tonight, so you know, I’m sure they were a little emotional, and they had an opportunity to clinch tonight. So there’s a lot that goes into that,” LBSU head coach Chris Acker said.
Throughout the 14-game losing streak, The Beach have had their fair share of blowout losses along with a handful of heartbreakers. With things trending towards their eighth 20-plus point loss of the season against the class of the Big West, LBSU made one final push to reinsert themselves.
A 10-1 run capped off by a long Askew three momentarily silenced the home crowd. Tait-Jones responded on the other end with a strong take to basket for a lay-up, plus the fifth foul called on DMX, ending his night prematurely.
Askew’s driving layup and three-pointer on the other end lowered the deficit to six points and gave him a game-high 29 points.
“[Askew] is coming back next year, so that’s exciting for our program,” Acker said.
An emphatic chase-down block by junior guard Chris Howell on freshman guard Kam Martin ignited the building again, denying the comeback to go any further.
The rejection sealed the deal with the arena shaking from noise, an unprecedented occurrence for longtime Division II UCSD, which upgraded to Division I status in 2020.
The Beach return home for the final game of the season Saturday at 4 p.m. against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, looking to avoid ending the year on a 15-game losing streak.
