The University of Hawai’i men’s basketball team will begin the second half of its Big West regular season with a game against Long Beach State on Saturday, January 31. The matchup is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. PT (11:00 a.m. HT) at the LBS Financial Credit Union Pyramid in Long Beach, California.
This contest marks the first meeting between the two teams this season. Last year, they split their series. Hawai’i is looking to recover after an 87-76 overtime loss at UC Irvine on Thursday, which moved them to second place in the league standings. Long Beach State currently sits tied for eighth in the Big West and returns home following its third consecutive defeat, a 71-61 loss at UC Riverside.
Hawai’i enters the game with a 15-5 overall record and a 7-3 mark in conference play. Long Beach State stands at 8-14 overall and 4-6 in the Big West.
Saturday’s game will be televised on Spectrum Sports Net and streamed live on ESPN+. Radio coverage will be available through ESPN Honolulu and its app. Live statistics can be found at StatBroadcast.com.
Head coach Eran Ganot leads Hawai’i with an overall record of 189-125 over 12 seasons, including an 186-123 record in his eleven years with the program.
In their all-time series, Long Beach State leads Hawai’i 21-19 and holds a 13-4 advantage when playing in Long Beach. However, Hawai’i won their most recent meeting.
The last fourteen games between these teams have all been decided by single digits. The Long Beach State coaching staff includes Chris Acker, who was previously an assistant at Hawai’i from 2015 to 2017, as well as former associate head coach John Montgomery (2015–2024). Gavin Sykes, one of the top freshman scorers nationally averaging 18.2 points per game (and 19.4 points per game in conference play), missed LBSU’s previous outing due to absence.
Hawai’i matched its season high with thirteen three-pointers made against UC Irvine and has shot forty percent from beyond the arc over its last two games (25-of-62 combined). The team is currently two wins and four losses on the road this season—two wins and three losses coming within conference play—with an average margin of victory of thirty-one-and-a-half points in road wins and an average defeat margin of twelve points in road losses.
Nationally, Hawai’i ranks among the top thirty teams in several statistical categories: fifth in three-point field goal percentage defense, twelfth in defensive rebounds per game, eighteenth in field goal percentage defense, twenty-fifth in scoring defense, twenty-eighth in scoring margin, and twenty-ninth in rebound margin.
Of their fifteen victories this season, eleven have come by double digits—including five out of seven Big West wins—and nine victories have been by margins of twenty points or more.
