The562’s coverage of Long Beach State athletics for the 2025-26 season is sponsored by Marilyn Bohl.
It was another tough night at the office for Long Beach State women’s basketball, as the Beach allowed 63 points in the second half to fall 94-58 against Portland (5-5) on Thursday night at the LBS Financial Credit Union Pyramid.
The Beach are now 0-9 on the season, and now have four losses by 30 points or more.
“I know everybody looks at the record, and I told them this after the last game, not every 0-7 or 0-8 team is an 0-7 or 0-8 team,” said LBSU head coach Amy Wright of the team’s record. “Schedules matter. Players that you have available matter … Every game starts 0-0, I don’t care what their record is, I don’t care what our record is. I think the mindset in practice is probably equivalent to what you see in the game. It’s really, really good to start, and then it fizzles toward the end. So it’s a matter of keeping them locked in.”
Sophomore JaQuoia Jones-Brown again carried the scoring load for the Beach with 25 points, finishing a rebound shy of a double-double. Freshman Brynna Pukis was 3/3 from beyond the arc to chip in 11 points, while Christy Reynoso chipped in seven points off the bench. Junior Kennan Ka led the squad with six assists.
The visiting Pilots capitalized on 18 offensive rebounds, holding a 21-4 edge in second-chance points and a 50-22 edge on points in the paint.
Turnovers were also an issue for Long Beach State, as their 22 giveaways helped Portland take 81 field goal attempts, compared to just 56 shots for the Beach.
Things were close at intermission, as a 6-0 Beach run made it a 31-28 Portland lead at halftime, but the visitors took off in the third quarter and never looked back.
Portland shot over 52 percent in each of the last two quarters, winning the third by a margin of 33-12 to take a 64-40 lead into the final period. The Pilots added 30 more points over the final 10 minutes to pull away for the 36-point victory.
“I thought we put two good quarters together, and then came out in the third quarter and gave up 10 points in one minute,” said Wright. “And that’s just a matter of being ready to play and follow the game plan … We put two quarters together, and you would think that would have carry-over, but right now, we’re a two quarter team, and we’re fighting to get to two-and-a-half, and then we’ll fight to get the three, then we’ll fight to get three-and-a-half, then we’ll fight to get to get four, and that’s when we’ll see more wins come up.”
The Beach will benefit from having eight days off before their next game, and Coach Wright said she wants her team to get in the gym taking shots. Jones-Brown has proven to be a reliable scorer, but Wright admits that LBSU needs others to put the ball in the basket more consistently.
LBSU will be back in action next Saturday when they travel to play No. 4 UCLA at 2 p.m. inside Pauley Pavilion.
