Freshmen have been stepping up for the Cerritos Falcons all season long.
This time around it was the shooting of guard Luis Medearis that catapulted the team to a first round win over the Ventura Pirates 66-59 Wednesday, Feb. 24.
“It’s not about being a freshmen, I’m just a hooper so the instinct kicks in,” Medearis said.
He finished with a game-high 22 points on 9-of-15 shooting.
The win set up a rematch with No. 4 East LA Saturday, Feb. 27. The Huskies will host the contest.
“We’re just going to come out and play. It’ll be fun, it’s a rematch that all I can say about that. We’ll be ready,” guard Brian Nebo said.
Nebo hasn’t been shy in terms of guarding the opposing team’s best player, as this game was no different for him.
Ventura’s Elijah Brown came into the playoffs averaging almost 21 points per game.
He did not get his first field goal to go down until 2:41 left in the first half.
“He wasn’t too much to handle, I’ve played against better,” Nebo said.
“I’ll give him his props he did his thing tonight came out and played the game how he’s supposed to but we did a good thing containing him,” he added.
His head coach Russ May was very proud of the defensive effort put out by Nebo and company.
“I think [Nebo] and our guys did a great job, we watched a lot of film and [Nebo] is an excellent defender. I give all of our team credit for containing him,” May said.
Brown finished with 18 points shooting 6-of-16 from the field.
Heading into the contest the Falcons were very aware that the Pirates liked to shoot the long ball.
The two teams first met Nov. 19, Cerritos were victorious over Ventura 66-58. In that game the Pirates attempted 37 three-pointers and made only six.
May said, “They obviously didn’t have a great shooting night and we’re happy for that, but I think we ran at their shooters pretty well and tried to run them off the three-point line.”
Ventura followed that performance by shooting 7-of-32 from the arc this game.
Nedo stated,“We’re like top five in state as a defensive team so that speaks for itself.”
The referees were very aware that the calendar flipped over to playoff basketball as both teams were looking for foul calls early but didn’t receive many.
Medearis said, “We’re just going to play like we do in practice. In practice we just foul, foul and foul more. We were surprised but that’s going to play in our advantage because we play physical.”
Cerritos did not attempt a free throw in the first half.
With East LA waiting May and company knows that the road only gets harder from this point on.
“Our attitude is going to have to change, we have to adapt to the game,” May said.
He added, “We’re going to have to be tough, we’re going to have to did down. It’s not going to be easy so we’re going to bring a man effort.”
