Long Beach State beats Cal Poly

The tank ran empty midway through the second half for Cal Poly.

As in, bone dry.

That’s when the Mustangs went scoreless for nearly seven minutes in their Big West Conference second-round game Thursday against Long Beach State, long enough for the 49ers to reestablish some breathing room in their 79-69 victory at the Anaheim Convention Center.

“Fatigue kind of kicked in toward the end,” said Cal Poly guard Lorenzo Keeler, who scored 27 points in a four-point victory Wednesday night against UC Irvine, but could muster only 11 on 4-for-18 shooting against Long Beach.

The third-seeded 49ers (16-15) will play in the semifinals for the second consecutive season, where they’ll meet Pacific, the team that upset them in the same round last season.

Pacific is seeded second and had a bye through the first two rounds--as did Long Beach last season.

Cal Poly’s legs didn’t just fail them down the stretch. Keeler scored on the Mustangs’ first shot of the game, but the 49ers answered with a 14-0 run and never trailed again.

“What you see in these games is the importance of a bye,” said Cal Poly Coach Joe Callero. “Tonight, I think you really saw it in the first five minutes, how they just came out and buzz-sawed us.”

Long Beach took its biggest lead, 45-30, in the opening minute of the second half, but then things got interesting. The Mustangs went on a 25-12 run over the next nine minutes, cutting the deficit to two on a three-point basket by Charles Anderson with 10:17 remaining.

“Defensively, we didn’t quite have the same intensity,” Long Beach Coach Dan Monson of the second-half letdown. Cal Poly “got behind and got more aggressive offensively.”

But that’s when its motor began to sputter.

The sixth-seeded Mustangs (12-19) missed their next eight field-goal attempts and turned the ball over three times in between.

Long Beach, meanwhile, played just well enough to stretch its lead to 13 points.

Anderson ended the drought with another three-pointer, but by then it was too little too late.

Cal Poly didn’t have a starter reach double figures in scoring until the final minute of the game. Its most productive players were reserves Shawn Lewis and Will Taylor. Lewis finished with 13 points and Taylor had 11 and a team-high 10 rebounds.

The 49ers had three starters in double figures, led by T.J. Robinson with 18 points. Eugene Phelps provided a spark off the bench for Long Beach, scoring 13 points on 5-for-6 shooting.

UC Davis 68, Cal State Fullerton 65: In the second game, the fourth-seeded Aggies reached their first semifinal in their third season in the Big West, coming from 10 points down in the first half against the Titans and winning, 68-65.

The Aggies (14-17) will play top-seeded UC Santa Barbara at 6 p.m. today.

The fifth-seeded Titans (16-15) trailed by a point and had the ball in the final seconds. Gerard Anderson drove into the lane and collided with 6-10 center Dominic Calegari, but no foul was called and his shot missed badly. Anderson scored 17 points to lead Fullerton and Jer’Vaughn Johnson had 15.