The Cerritos College Falcons men’s basketball team improved to 15-3 on Jan. 14 behind forward Dorian Tate’s double-double performance and guard DJ Holt’s 17 points off the bench against the Rio Hondo College Roadrunners in a 92-84 victory.
“DJ came off the bench and he can really shoot it,” Falcons head coach Russ May said. “His five 3s really helped.”
May added, “It started with Dorian Tate. Once they doubled him in the post, Dorian did a great job of finding open shooters and David and DJ were able to knock down shots.”
Tate finished the game with a team leading 27 points. He also recorded 11 rebounds and three assists while Holt led all 3-point scorers with five 3-pointers made.
The first half found the Falcons down 21-10 before taking their first timeout six minutes into the game.
“We have to get off to a hot start everyday,” Tate said about the team’s slow start.
He added, “We never know who’s going to show up on a certain night.”
“They played really hard and made plays and we didn’t respond until a little bit later in the first half. Once we did, we started finding our rhythm a little bit and we were able to get the ball inside and defend a little bit better,” May said.
Cerritos slowly chipped away at the deficit and ended the first half tied at 40-40.
The Falcons opened up the second half with a 44-42 lead and maintained the lead the rest of the game, ultimately coming away with the win.
Falcons assistant coach Jordan Littlejohn said, “It was a rough first half. We ended up 0-0 if you look at it from that perspective. Offensively, there were some things that we should have been doing the first half that we did the second half. That’s what turned it around.”
Littlejohn attributed the Falcons’ turnaround to the point guards shooting better and added, “They went more inside to Tate.”
Sophomore guard David Mack contributed 16 points including three 3-pointers and 4 assists in the team’s win.
Holt said, “We started slow and I saw we needed energy and I provided that coming off the bench for us. We have to bring it every night.”
He added that his mindset coming off the bench is to always make his impact felt no matter what the situation is.
“I told our guys we better be ready because every team’s going to play us like that. We have big goals so hopefully we’ll be ready to go out and play hard,” May said.
The Falcons look ahead to Jan. 21 where they will open conference play against Los Angeles Southwest College.
