We\u2019re so happy to be saying goodbye tonight to 2020, the year that took and took and took. The Long Beach State men\u2019s basketball team will be returning on New Year\u2019s Day and Jan. 2 for a pair of Big West-opening contests against Cal State Bakersfield in the Walter Pyramid at 4 p.m.<\/p>\n
The Beach haven\u2019t looked that good this year, with a blowout 45-point loss to the University of San Francisco. But honestly, at the end of this year, how good a team is seems so much less important than how they persevere through these bizarre times. The Long Beach State men\u2019s team, for example, had a staff member test positive earlier this month, on the day the team was supposed to play its rescheduled game against UCLA.<\/p>\n
The result caused a two-week \u201cpause\u201d for the team with players and coaches going back into quarantine. The scant workouts they were allowed involved a coach sitting in a marked off \u201ccoaching box\u201d at center court in the Pyramid while two players shot baskets just for practice, one on either side of the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone is sacrificing a lot, the kids are sacrificing a lot to be able to play,\u201d said LBSU men\u2019s coach Dan Monson.<\/p>\n
Consider that as the team prepares for its conference opener, the team has had fewer than 10 full-contact practices together. They\u2019re not the only ones who\u2019ve dealt with adversity, of course. The Long Beach State women\u2019s team was the only program functioning in the entire city during the men\u2019s team\u2019s two-week pause. The women have been impressive, getting off to a 3-1 start with a six-point defeat at USC the only blemish on their record.<\/p>\n
But Murphy\u2019s Law has governed the women\u2019s program as well. The team had to cancel a game on the day it was scheduled due to a player having brief contact with a person who had tested positive for COVID-19. A few rounds of negative tests later and the team was back in action, blowing out UC Riverside 74-44 in their Big West opener, the team\u2019s biggest win in five years.<\/p>\n
But the very next night, as they prepared to host Riverside for the second half of the teams\u2019 two-game series, rain poured down above the Pyramid, and some poured inside, as well. The building is known to have occasional leaks (sometimes it\u2019s just condensation inside the ceiling dripping down), but they\u2019re usually off-court. This was on the floor, right in front of the visitor\u2019s bench. After mopping and cleaning and waiting an hour, officials decided the leak was too severe to play the game and sent both teams home.<\/p>\n
Only in 2020: an indoor rainout.<\/p>\n
The two teams played again at Riverside the next day, where the Beach won again. They\u2019ll be on the road in Bakersfield trying to remain unbeaten in Big West play Friday and Saturday, as the city and its sports fans celebrate a New Year, one that will hopefully make a lot more sense to all of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While the men have struggled, the women’s team are off to an impressive 3-1 start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":17189,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[199],"class_list":["post-7764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-the562","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7764"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=7764"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}