The Cerritos College women’s basketball team was defeated by El Camino College 68-47, ending the Falcons’ three-game winning streak.

The team had a chance, but fell short of the first place position in the South Coast Conference, however, the team held on to second place,

The Falcons are 3-2 in the conference (15-12 overall).

This is the second time this season that the team fell to El Camino’s gameplay, previously losing to El Camino 77-57 on Jan. 17.

The Falcons ended the first half with a close score of 29-25.

Coming back onto the court for the second half of the game El Camino took off and Cerritos wasn’t able to close the gap.

The top performer for Cerritos College was Freshman guard No. 20 Jesenia Rendon with 18 points, eight rebounds, two assists and a steal throughout the game.

Head coach Trisha Kozlowski described El Camino’s gameplay saying, “I think they’re consistent on both ends. They know their roles and they’re very smart players. We have a lot of respect for them, but it is a rivalry. I mean we gotta show up and I just don’t think we had that today.”

“We didn’t have that tenacity on defense y’know [sic]. Things might not go your way offensively, but you gotta shore up defense,” said Kozlowski.

Freshman guard No. 24 Serena Rendon wishes she would’ve played harder. “I don’t think I played at my full potential or as hard as I usually do.”

Serena also said, “I need to be more encouraging to my teammates and handle my frustration better.

“As a team we need to sprint back. We need to have help on side defense. We also need to be more patient on offense and have more rebounds,” said Serena Rendon.

Rendon shot 4-for-11 in the game against El Camino. Serena said, “I didn’t know I shot 11 times until now, but I think I’m just kind of starting to lose a little bit of confidence.”

Serena Rendon said, “My coach gives me so much confidence and encourages me so much, but I just think when I’m shooting bad I rather give the ball to someone else or if I miss layups it gets in my head. I need to learn to tell myself ‘next play’ like my coach says.”

Serena finished the game with 8 points, 3 rebounds and 2 steals.

Sophomore forward No. 15 Alexis Clark says the team was missing consistency throughout the game and that was a major factor that resulted in a loss for the Falcons.

Clark talked about her performance against El Camino and said she could’ve done better.

Clark spoke on what the team can do better, saying, “We can just focus in more on us as a group, who’s on the floor, who’s actually playing and just read each other a little better.”

Freshman forward/center No. 33 Miranda Ta’amu says that consistency always plays a big role for the players, as well as their previous and upcoming games.

Ta’amu believes the team was prepared coming into the game, but just didn’t execute the game plan.

“We just didn’t come out as hard as they did. We literally beat ourselves, it’s not like they were above us or anything. We’re basically the same team it’s just they came out stronger tonight,” said Ta’amu.

She also emphasized that the team is now putting this loss past them and moving forward with what they have. As well as learning from the mistakes that were made and improving on those areas.

Ta’amu said, “Second place [in conference] should definitely be ours if we execute and play the way we have been previously [playing].”

Serena Rendon said each opponent is very different. “We don’t really look at the score. We look at what we did wrong in the game so we don’t carry it over in the next game.

“We remain confident, but we don’t get carried away. What we also get out of those games is, we look at how well we run our plays and how patient we were,” said Serena.

During halftime, former women’s basketball head coach Karen Welliver came out onto the court with some of her previous assistant coaches and players. Welliver gave thanks to those who helped her along the way during her career at Cerritos College.

Welliver will be inducted into the California Community College Women’s Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame this year.

The Cerritos College women’s basketball team will have its next conference game away against Los Angeles Southwest on Feb. 9.