The Cerritos College men’s basketball is no longer undefeated in the conference following a 80-66 loss to the Mt. San Antonio College Mounties at The Aviary on Friday night, snapping Cerritos College’s seven-game winning streak.
“We did horrible,” said point guard Anthony Holliday. “We did not show up today, at all. It was horrible.”
Holliday had 16 points while guard Kevin Conrad chipped in 12 points and six rebounds who both shot a combined 10-for-23 from the field.
The game was closely contested with the Falcons only trailing by one point at halftime.
But the Mounties rallied with a 21-2 run to start the second half.
The Mounties ran away with the game from there.
“We did not respond to the challenge very well,” said head coach Russ May. “We weren’t very mentally tough. I give (the Mounties) credit, they’re a very good team. They deserve to whoop us.”
May added, “We had five real good opportunities to start the half and we didn’t convert on any of them. If we convert on some of those early it’s a little different, but we had really good looks at the basket and didn’t convert and they did.”
Cerritos College could not get into an offensive rhythm throughout the night shooting 39.7 percent from the field versus the 47.2 percent that Mt. SAC shot.
Defensively the Falcons fell apart giving up 24 points off of turnovers.
“We turned the ball over a lot,” said guard Andrew Torres. “It was a close game at halftime but we started forcing things. We kind of beat ourselves. They played their game and we didn’t play ours.”
Cerritos College will play its next three games on the road with its next match up on Wednesday against Los Angeles Trade-Tech College at 6 p.m.
The Falcons vow to rectify their mistakes.
“Next game, we just need to get better,” said Holliday. “We have to come back and adjust some things. We have to get mentally tougher because out there we just lost it.”
Torres added, “We’re still 7-1 and we still have a chance to win the conference. We just can’t let this game break us.”