Cerritos turned it on from the very beginning and earned the right to call itself conference champions after an 85-61 victory Friday, Feb. 19.
Head coach Russ May expressed his delight for the Cerritos College win.
“I’m very relieved we don’t like to share. Not with Long Beach. A win is a win, a league title is a league title but this one is pretty satisfying,” he said.
Guard Brian Nebo let it be known that this was the game he had circled on his calendar following his ejection in the last meeting.
In the early going Nebo scored a quick seven points and was seen jaw-jacking with some of the Long Beach City players.
“I just wanted him to keep his focus on what he was doing and not get into individual stuff. When he plays like he did in the first half and locks-in as a team member he’s great,” May said.
In hindsight Nebo wasn’t trying to recreate the scene at Long Beach City but trying to get the crowd involved.
“He just said the referees were going to be tight on us because of the last game. I was just trying to get the crowd involved I wasn’t doing any trash talking. I wanted to get my teammates involved and getting our defense amped up and we did,” Nebo said.
Much like the last game forward Kyle Geer started out on Vikings’ leading scorer Chris Camper. Geer frustrated Camper early forcing him to miss multiple shots, even a layup.
Following Geer, forward Elvis Okafor and Nebo took turns at given Camper a look on defense.
“We just wanted to get into him. Playing good defense on him. He’s a good player I’m not going to lie, that’s a friend of mine, I’m going to respect his game he had a great season and best of luck to him in the future,” Nebo said.
Camper still managed to finish with 26 points after scoring 10 points on 2-for-8 shooting in the first half.
After starting the season 9-8 Cerritos has won 11 of the last 12 games on the season. With the only loss coming to highly ranked East LA; a game that was decided by six points in overtime.
In that game tempers flared over who should have taken the last shot in regulation from that point on the team has shown a more inclusive effort to share the ball.
“It’s critical, everybody is sharing the ball we’ve been doing a lot better job of that lately,” May said.
Luis Medearis scored 14 points on the night and was the recipient of some great team ball movement.
“It was very important, [LBCC’s] defensive assignments weren’t very good, when our team moves the ball we’re really good. Everybody scored tonight because the ball is moving in the game and we’re really unstoppable when we do that,” Medearis said.
Every player scored on the team led by reserve Khalid Washington, who is seeming to get more and more comfortable in the offense, with 16 points.
Every win is important to the team however; with an outright conference title on the line and playing a rival school this one meant a lot.
“Going into playoffs we made a statement. Everybody knows what happened last time we played Long Beach and now they’re going to know the score and know we’re not playing,” Medearis said.
