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The Cerritos College men's water polo
team allowed six unanswered goals to Long Beach City
College in their Southern California Regional Playoff
game at Cypress College on Friday morning. It turned a
3-2 Viking lead into an insurmountable 9-2 deficit for
the Falcons, and resulted in a 13-5 loss, which ended
their season. Cerritos (19-11), the #8-seeded team,
advanced to the second round after a 9-8 win over
Riverside College on Wednesday night. Top-seeded Long
Beach City (26-2) advances to the semi-finals and will
play the winner of the Orange Coast-Ventura game on
Saturday at 11:00 a.m.
After falling behind 2-0 to start the
game, sophomore
Omar Ramirez
(Bell Gardens HS)
scored with 4:24 left in the first quarter off a nice
crossing pass from freshman
AJ Abrego
(El Rancho HS).
It was a 3-1 Viking lead after Sam O'Hare scored, but
freshman
Jan-Michael
Pineda (Cerritos
HS) got the Falcons to within 3-2 on a power
play goal with 3:27 left, with Abrego picking up the
assist.
The Vikings started to pull away at
the end of the first quarter, scoring two goals in the
final 26 seconds, as Djoko Radunovic scored before Scott
Burns made it a 5-2 game with his power play goal with
six seconds remaining. The second quarter was not kind
to the Falcons, as they were outscored, 4-0, including
two last-minute goals by Milos Skaljac putting Long
Beach City up, 9-2 at intermission. The first two LBCC
goals in the second quarter came off Cerritos turnovers.
In the third quarter, the Falcons
played much better, but could not take advantage of
several opportunities. Ramirez scored 33 seconds in the
third quarter, while freshman
Jimmy
Quintana (Montebello
HS) got the Falcons to within 9-4 on a goal
with 6:47 remaining in the quarter. Cerritos gained
possession of the ball again on a kick-out against the
Vikings with 4:42 remaining in the third quarter and
called timeout. With a chance to get closer and change
the momentum of the game, Cerritos missed their
opportunity to score and Long Beach responded with a
Skaljac goal and a 10-4 lead.
Three more Viking goals in the fourth
quarter made it a 13-4 game before freshman
Christian
Flores (Montebello
HS) picked up his lone tally of the game to
close out the scoring. Falcon goalkeeper
Billy Smith
(Cypress HS)
made six blocks in the game, while LBCC's George
Alberson made seven stops. |
