The Cerritos College men's soccer team recorded their biggest win of the season on Tuesday afternoon when they defeated Mt. San Antonio College, 2-0 in a South Coast Conference game. The Mounties entered the game ranked #1 in both the nation and state and the win secured the team's third place spot in the conference with three regular season games remaining. With the win, the Falcons, who are ranked #2 in the state and in Southern California, are now 13-3-4 overall and 7-1-3 in the conference for 24 points, while Mt. SAC is now 17-2-2 on the year and 8-2-1 in the SCC for 25 points. Long Beach City currently leads the conference with a 9-2-0 record for 27 points. The Falcons will now host seventh place Los Angeles Harbor at 3:00 p.m. on Friday and then host the first place Vikings next Tuesday.

    "In this game, we were the underdogs to everybody but ourselves," said Falcon head coach Benny Artiaga. "I could see it in our guys demeanor that they oozed with confidence and to their credit they prepared the all week at a high level of intensity. In a game of this nature, coaching is kept to a minimum. All the credit needs to go to our guys. Mt. SAC is a good team with good coaching and to their credit they put a lot of pressure on us throughout the game. But our guys matched that intensity when they needed to and our goalkeeper Miguel Lopez (Vocational Tech, NV HS) was absolutely amazing."

    The game started off with both teams playing hard and physical, but in the ninth minute of the game, a phenomenal play that started in the back line took only four touches to reach the goal. After an intercepted pass, the ball was played from the defense to freshman forward Brian Alvarez (Salesian HS), who did a great job of holding possession for a split second long enough for sophomore midfielder Jose Diaz (Salesian HS). Diaz then made a diagonal run and picked his head up and find sophomore forward Joshua Meyer (Cerritos HS), who put the eventual game-winning goal in the first post past the Mountie goalkeeper. The irony of that play was that Diaz, a former Mt. San Antonio player, had the assist that was put past former Falcon goalkeeper Robert Carrillo.

    Cerritos would not let up and four minutes later put a second goal in the net when sophomore defender Marco Pulido (South Gate HS) sent a long throw-in deep in the box and freshman defender Ivan Perez (Chaparral, NV HS) would get up high off the ground and scored another great goal past Carrillo, who was replaced at halftime. The game turned into an exciting seesaw battle that would change momentum throughout the contest. The intensity of the game was up on both sides and late in the second half Mt. SAC would have two clear scoring opportunities that would be turned away by Lopez, who made eight saves for the win, his eighth of the year and fourth shutout.