Long Beach State Beach men's basketball

We're holding strong at 86 ratings on Apple, so we're just 14 away from our goal.

of 100 by the time the season tips off on November 2nd against Long Beach State.

So let's get to that mark if we can.

And of course, you can support the show over on Venmo at Running Hoops, which is also where you can pre-order my 2026-2027 Big 12 preview.

But we'll see.

For additional context and preview purposes, I wanted to share where Blue Ribbon ranks each of Utah's 14 non-conference opponents heading into the upcoming season.

So Long Beach State, the opener on November 2nd, they've got them picked 12th out of 12 in the Big West.

Towson.

Uh, they both left about a year apart from each other, maybe two years apart.

John was only gone two years as he went to Long Beach State, and he is back.

Now, in my opinion, and I haven't asked John, I don't know if he would admit it, if it is true, but I feel like the Long Beach State team is really headed in a bad... well, has been headed in a bad direction.

Chris Acker, another former UH assistant and former Chaminade player, is the head coach there.

He was more recently a head assistant or one of the top assistants at San Diego State.

Uh, so he goes to Fre- uh, he goes over to Long Beach State, and they have struggled.

I don't...

I'm, I'm 99% sure they didn't make the Big West Tournament at least one of the two years, and it might have been both.

He, during TCU's foreign tour this summer, had multiple games where he made three or more three-point shots.

And then another name to keep an eye on is Gavin Sykes from Long Beach State, who had a really, really positive performance.

year last year in the big west shooting the basketball made over 63s this is not going to be a flashy team jamie dixon's teams never are but tcu is the type of team again in my opinion that has the seasoning to finish in the top tier of the big 12 i'm going to give you another reason why the big 12 has had a massive talent drain 30 first round picks in the nba draft in june from the big 12 nine first round picks.

That's almost a third of the Big 12 going in the first round.

We already got Montana State kind of filling that and Eastern Oregon for that matter.

But maybe they go out and get like a big sky team like a Long Beach or Cal Poly or somebody like that to fill out the schedule.

One of the big questions we always had here is what is gonna happen with Gonzaga playing at Climate Pledge Arena.

We now have an answer to that question with this game against Oregon.