Despite a 25 point effort by Cerritos College Falcons starter Marissa Rendon, the women’s basketball team fell under .500 on Friday with a loss to Mt. SAC 67-60.

The Falcons (4-5) started the game off slow against the top-ranked team in the state Mt. SAC (11-0) falling behind 11-1 in the first three and a half minutes of the game.

Falcons Head Coach Karen Welliver said,”We just were not hitting the shots that we needed. It was nothing defensively.”

Mt. SAC never gave up the lead as the Falcons were faced a 14 point deficit in the first half.

The Falcons kept pushing offensively and momentum finally came in favor of the Falcons when Angela Pena stole the ball from Mt. SAC and the Falcons finished the half on a 8-0 run with Rendon’s jump shot at 0:04 seconds brining the score to 27-23.

In the second half Mt. SAC continued to keep the Falcons at bay with a 13 point lead.

With 4:29 left on the clock Angela Pena’s jump shot helped the Falcons bridged the gap to 52-48.

However that would be the closest that the Falcons would ever get to overcoming Mt. SAC down the stretch as Mt. SAC hit their free-throws to put the game away for good.

Mt. SAC had a huge performance from Ashley Carter who came off the bench to lead Mt. SAC in scoring with 19 points.

Welliver said,”We held their (Mt. SAC) leading scorer down to six points, but then this kid (Carter) came off the bench and got 19 points off of us and that didn’t help at all.”

The Mt. SAC bench outscored the Falcon’s bench 25-11.

Rebounding was an issue for the Cerritos as Mt. SAC out-rebounded the Falcons 44-27.

Associate Head Coach Tricia Raniewicz said,”We need to work a lot more on rebounding. We gave up on some rebounds that we shouldn’t have. We just need to get tougher in the paint.”

Raniewicz added,”They (Mt. SAC) did have a little bit of size against us, and I think that because we were the smaller team that we needed to use our speed and quickness and really start being more physical. It’s a fixable problem.”

The Falcons played without starter Deenesha Bee who is out with injury.

Welliver said regarding the bench’s performance filling in for Bee’s absence,”We are a very balanced team. The girls who came off the bench did a really good job.”

The Falcons are scheduled to play against Long Beach City College (7-1) on Friday Dec. 14th at Irvine Valley College at 6pm.