The Cerritos men’s basketball team took on the Long Beach City College Vikings and successfully went on an undefeated 10-0 conference run after beating their rival 93-87 on Feb. 23.
The Cerritos College gym quickly filled up with fans supporting both the Falcons and the Vikings.
Before the game, five players had their names announced for sophomore night but they wasted no time in starting the game.
Cerritos opened up the game with the scoring and scored six points before Long Beach could score one.
The rest of the first half was kept pretty close as Cerritos wouldn’t get more than a nine-point lead. The Falcons went into halftime leading 45-38.
Previous to this game, LBCC had a conference record of 4-5 but this didn’t make sophomore forward/guard, Everett May, think it was going to be an easy game, he said he expected it to be a good one.
“I wouldn’t say easy for sure, I mean we came into this game 9-0,” Everett May said, “You can’t discredit any of our opponents this year.”
Head coach, Russ May, said the approach coming into the second half was to come in more aggressively on defense and play with a little bit more energy.
In the second half the Vikings came out scoring first but the Falcons made sure to answer back each time it looked like they were catching up. Cerritos never trailed throughout the entirety of the game.
With 10 minutes and 42 seconds left to go in the game, the Falcons had their biggest lead of the night which was 13 points.
After this the Vikings would catch up again and get as close as four points away from tying the game after about 1 minute and 30 seconds of play since their big lead.
The rest of the game was the two teams going back and forth with each other as the Vikings found themselves trailing by 10 points multiple times and then coming back as close as two points to tie the game with the Falcons.
Russ May didn’t seem phased that the team was going back and forth between having a good lead and being in a tight game.
He said, “We’ve been in a lot of close games all year. I’m just glad that you know we’ve learned from those games and been able to just stay calm and make plays when we had to.”
The clock was running down and the Falcons kept scoring with the Vikings following close behind.
The final buzzer rang and the Falcons had won by six points to secure their perfect conference record, something that hasn’t been done since the 2015-2016 season.
This wasn’t the first time Russ May had coached an unbeatable conference team but he didn’t let that take away from the moment and he hopes to make bigger memories in the playoffs coming up.
“It’s special you know, you don’t get an opportunity to win your conference undefeated and I give all the credit to our players who’ve put in the dedication of being here,” Russ May said.
The Falcons will be hosting MiraCosta in the first round of the Southern California Regional Playoffs on Feb. 28.
Everett May said it feels great to be 10-0 but he emphasized that the job’s not done yet.
