For the first time in four seasons, the Washington State men’s basketball team couldn’t send its seniors out on a high note, falling to the California Golden Bears, 80-62, Sunday night in the last home game of the season.

With about 45 seconds left in the game, senior forwards Brett Boese and Junior Longrus checked out of a contest in Beasley Coliseum for the last time and both received a standing ovation from the crowd. The Cougars (9-18, 1-14 Pac-12) couldn’t ride that momentum though, falling to the Bears (19-8, 9-5) for their 13th-straight loss.

“Every day, (Boese and Longrus) bring their energy. We never see them mope or frown,” junior guard Que Johnson said in the postgame news conference. “Through these tough times, they’ve shown their character.”

Even though Cal rolled out to a 12-2 lead to start the game, Longrus got his final game in Beasley Coliseum kicked off well by slamming home a two-handed dunk for the Cougars’ first points of the game while absorbing a foul from Cal sophomore forward Kingsley Okoroh.

Three-point shooting keyed the early outburst for the Bears as they started the game 4-for-5 from behind the arc.

Senior Guard Jabari Bird and junior guard Jordan Mathews led the Bears by knocking down their first two 3’s of the game. Bird, Mathews and senior guard Tyrone Wallace combined to go 8-for-9 from behind the arc.

“It felt like we had really good looks, we got open and we just couldn’t knock down those same shots that they were hitting,” junior forward Josh Hawkinson said. “We got put in positions that allowed us to score and we just missed.”

Cal ended up outshooting the Cougs 56-38 percent from 3 and 58-40 percent from the field.

The Cougs chipped away at Cal’s double-digit lead for the remainder of the half, highlighted by junior guard Ike Iroegbu driving coast-to-coast and slashing to the basket to finish a reversal while being hacked by Okoroh.

Iroegbu knocked down the and-1 free throw to make it 27-21 with 5:08 to go in the first half. WSU would head to the locker room trailing the Golden Bears 40-21.

In a rather uneventful 20 minutes of basketball, the Golden Bears coasted to a 20-point lead by the 8:14 mark of the second half and never looked back from there. Cal’s Wallace came on strong in the second half after not scoring in the opening frame, knocking down three 3-pointers and scoring 17, which tied for the game high.

With WSU’s fate sealed as the bottom seed in the Pac-12, Senior Night provided Head Coach Ernie Kent with a chance to mix up his lineups. Going with Iroegbu, Longrus, junior forward Josh Hawkinson, Boese and freshman Guard Viont’e Daniels, Kent penciled in his 13th different starting combination of the season.

Kent said that in the last three games of the regular season, he plans on playing more young guys, like Daniels and freshman forward Robert Franks, to get them more time at game speed.

Junior forward Connor Clifford and Johnson capitalized on the unconventional personnel and ended up the Cougs’ top two scorers with 17 and 12, respectively. Hawkinson also had 12, but failed to pick up his 19th double-double of the season, pulling down just seven rebounds.

Halftime ceremonies included revealing history and anthropology double-major Chris Lanphear as the man behind the mask of Butch T. Cougar. Lanphear took ninth place as Butch in the Universal Cheerleaders Association’s mascot national championship in January.

In honor of Autism Speaks Awareness Weekend, Kent and other WSU coaches wore blue puzzle piece pins. Kent’s son, Jordan, is autistic, but as Kent said, he ended up winning four basketball state championships in high school and playing a few years in the NFL, while graduating from Oregon with a degree in business.

“I want to encourage any parent out there that there is hope and that’s why I wanted to be supportive of that this weekend,” Kent said.

Having played their final home games of the season, the Cougars will take the short trip to play the Pac-12’s Oregon schools in their second-to-last week of the regular season. WSU will tipoff against Oregon at 7 p.m., Wednesday and Oregon State at 3:30 p.m., Sunday. The Pac-12 Networks will broadcast both games.