Freshman guard Riley Hamilton made his first start of the season in place of the injured Salvador Carlos to help lead the Falcons to a 65-63 victory over Los Angeles Southwest.

Hamilton finished with 10 points, six rebounds and three steals in a performance Head coach Russ May described as fantastic and outstanding.

Hamilton said, “Before every game coach May tells me to be aggressive and knock down open shots and that’s what i tried to do.”

The victory over LA Southwest marked four straight wins for the men’s basketball team as they make a playoff push.

May said, “[This] was a much needed victory, it was a crucial one for playoffs.”

Cerritos is now tied with LA Southwest for second place in the conference standings behind 6-1 EC-Compton.

First place in the conference automatically receives a playoff berth, teams who do not receive and automatic berth are seeded based on their finish in the conference standings, making every conference game count.

The Falcons came out strong in the first half leading by as much as eight points but would only finish the half up 35-33.

In the second half the Falcons were able to push their lead to 12 with 11 minutes left to play.

Despite the lead, Southwest fought back to cut the lead to three with less than 50 seconds on the clock.

Southwest then sunk two free throws to make the score 64-63 with eight seconds left before Cerritos closed the game out.

Despite losing the rebounding battle and only shooting 44 percent from the free throw line, the Falcons still managed to find a way to win forcing 19 turnovers.

Los Angeles Harbor, Long Beach City and El Camino are the final opponents for Cerritos, each of which are conference games and will most likely decide the seeding for playoffs.

Hamilton said, “The team’s main focus at this point is just taking each game one at a time and keep building our resume so we can get a high seat in the playoffs.”