The Cerritos Falcons cruised through the El Camino Warriors 85-57 in the fist conference match up of the season.
The Falcons were led by Miles Ceballos who recorded a triple double, along with great performances from Dillon Botts and Everett May who scored a combined of 29 points.
“This was big for me, last game I was 1-assist away so when the guys(teammates) told me I was close I had to go for it,” said Ceballos after his triple double performance against El Camino.
The Falcons got the scoring going early as eight minutes into the game the Falcons were able to hold a 12-point lead.
Warriors Guard Tuione Vaitai opened the game with the first basket. However, the Falcons were able to respond with a couple baskets of their own and keep the lead for the rest of the way as there were no lead changes after that.
Cerritos shot the ball well in the first half shooting 57% from three and making 50% of their total shots. Botts led the team in scoring in the 1st half with 11 points.
At halftime the Falcons commanded a dominating lead of 40-24. Coach Russ May commented on the teams first half defense saying, “we were able to follow our scouting reports, we knew who their shooters were. Once we were able to minimize them, it turned into team defense.”
The Falcons did not shoot the ball from long distance nearly as well in the 2nd half than the 1st half as they shot only 5-13(38.5%) from 3-point range.
That didn’t affect Sophomore Guard/Forward Everett May (Los Alamitos HS) as he exploded for 11 points in the 2nd half. May shot the ball well as he went 4-5(80%) from the field and 2-3(67%) from the 3 point line while adding a free throw to his total.
The Falcons played excellent perimeter defense as they were able to hold the Warriors to shoot 1-13(7.7% from 3-point range.
Cerritos was also able to only turn the ball over 4 times, compared to the Warriors 11 as the Falcons were able to turn that into 10 points.
The rebound game was equivalent at 34 to each team, however, the Warriors were able to capitalize and turn that into 16 second chance points compared to the Falcons 10 points.
Due to the large lead the Falcons were able to rotate a lot of depth into the game causing their bench to out score the Warriors 28-7. The Falcons had a tie at leading scorer off the bench at 9 points from Sophomore Guard Taeo Thomas (Verbum Dei HS) and Sophomore Forward Cameron McCoy .
The Cerritos Falcons improve to a record of 10-9 while the El Camino Warriors fall to a record of 7-12 on the season.
Cerritos College takes on Compton College (6-13) at the Cerritos College Gym on Jan. 26 at 5 p.m. The Falcons have won 3-games in a row, and they look to keep Compton College on a losing streak as they have lost 3-games in a row.
