Long Beach State rallies to win 10th straight
The Long Beach State women’s basketball team went to the locker room at halftime on Saturday trailing Cal State Bakersfield by double digits, its nine-game win streak in jeopardy.
Then, the switch flipped. LBSU controlled the second half for a 66-55 win, the 10th victory in a row for a team that was down to eight healthy players against Bakersfield.
“Gutty, gutty game,” coach Jeff Cammon said. “It’s great to see our young ladies just find a way to win games, even when we’re not playing at our best.”
Long Beach (17-7 overall, 12-2 Big West) trailed 51-47 entering the fourth quarter, but outscored Bakersfield 19-4 in the final frame to turn a close game into a double-digit win.
Kianna Hamilton-Fisher led LBSU with 22 points, to go with five rebounds, five assists and five steals. Ma’Qhi Berry had a season-high 17 points, eight rebounds, three steals and two blocked shots and Tori Harris added 14 points and five rebounds.
To Cammon, reaching a double-digit win streak — LBSU’s longest streak since the 2020-21 season — is not as big of a deal as what his players are learning.
“We try to stay away from the streaks and the numbers, and just focus on one game at a time,” Cammon said. “We’re excited that we’re growing and getting better. I think that’s the most important thing.”
The emotion the coach wants his team to play with is down the middle — not too high or low.
“Sometimes when you’re (like) `Oh, we’re on a streak,’ it takes you away from what we’ve been doing all along,” Cammon said.
What LBSU has been doing is sticking to the process, and staying the course.
Cammon scheduled a tough nonconference slate on purpose, hoping his players could learn from the experience. Long Beach lost to No. 18 Arizona and No. 24 Baylor and opened the season with a defeat at Gonzaga — which was unranked but is now in the Top 25.
LBSU went 5-5 in nonconference play, and then started 2-2 in Big West games. Then, it started rolling, not losing a game since Jan. 7 and moving into first place last week.
“I know a lot of people questioned why we scheduled (hard),” Cammon said. “We scheduled hard to learn.”
Long Beach is now making plays that it wasn’t earlier in the season, according to Cammon. So far, he said the team has kept the same composure whether its record has been .500 or now 10 games above .500.
“The morale is the same,” Cammon said.
On Saturday, the Long Beach players did not panic when they found themselves trailing by 11 at the intermission.
“Even in the locker room at halftime, we weren’t all stressed out,” HamiltonFisher said. “It was more like, `What do we need to do to come out stronger?’”