The Long Beach State women’s basketball team was unable to leave this Veterans Day with a win after dropping its second match of the season 86-50 against USC.
“A higher caliber team makes us better. I saw a lot of good things tonight, but obviously there’s a lot of things we need to work on,” head coach Jeff Cammon said.
From the get-go scoring was hard to come by for Long Beach (0-2) as the first quarter ended with USC up 23-8 led by USC’s Aliyah Mazyk raining in 3-of-4 shots from behind the arc.
After turning the ball over and clearly getting frustrated, sophomore guard Shanaijah Davison slammed the scorers table while walking back to the bench in fumes.
Aside from the ankle-shattering crossover sending her defender to the floor, Davison was unable to get much going in the first half, going 0-for-6 with one made free throw.
Seeing that there was no remedy in sight for Davison’s struggles, Cammon turned to freshman freshman guard Kianna Hamilton-Fisher to energize the team.
“She’s going to be a big part of what we do in the future,” Cammon said. “This is basketball, this is sports, and you’re going to have tough nights … She needs to get that experience now so we can see what we have and get her better for the future.”
In need of a spark for the 49ers, coach Cammon decided to bring full-court pressure coming into the second half, only to end up in a track meet with the Trojans in which they took the gold.
“I thought offensively we were rushed and we took quick shots and then allowed them to get in transition and sped the game up a little too much as they were scoring in transition,” said coach Cammon.
Unable to match the energy of Mazyk and Minyon Moore out on the break, the 49ers soon fell into a hole too deep to climb out.
“I’m encouraged that we can [get better], it’s just about doing it consistently,” said coach Cammon.
Next game will be 6 p.m. Friday at the University of Utah.