Sophomore guard Ken Brown ignited an inspired second-half performance and led the Cerritos men’s basketball team to its second straight division championship, by beating Long Beach City College, 69-51, on Wednesday night.
The win gave the Falcons (18-10) their second straight division title, while Long Beach (9-15) had to settle for second place in the division.
For Cerritos head coach Russ May, the victory was some-what of a dream scenario.
“It’s awesome. It’s nice to beat your rival for the title. It doesn’t get much better than that,” he exclaimed.
Brown ended the game with a team-high 13 points to go along with eight rebounds, and three assists.
However, it was his defense that sparked a second-half run by Cerritos.
Midway through the second half, and Cerritos up by only two points, Brown came up with a steal on consecutive possessions that resulted in an easy layup and then a 3-pointer from Jeremy Pope. With the lead up to seven, Cerritos never looked back en route to its 18-point victory.
Talking about the quality of play from the Falcons, Brown stated that “if I had to give us a grade, I’d give is a B+. We just didn’t have the same fire in the first half as we did in the second.”
However, Brown shied away from taking credit for the win. Instead, he insisted that he did nothing more than play his role in the team.
“My goal is to keep my teammates involved and not force anything out there. Real simply, my job is just to be a good point guard, so that’s what I did,” he explained.
May was quick to spread out the praise as well.
“(Brown) brings us great energy off the bench, but (Brandon) Hicks gave us some big buckets as well. In fact, the whole bench did really well tonight,” he said.
For the Vikings, it was a coach’s worst nightmare of turnovers and missed free throws. The team committed 19 turnovers, including 9 travels, and shot a meager 47 percent from the free throw line (9-19).
What was a source of frustration for the Vikings was a proud accomplishment for May and company.
“We played really good defense tonight. We didn’t allow them to convert many attempts,” May proclaimed.
“Especially in the second half, we held them to only 22 points. So that’s real good,” he added.
Offensively for Cerritos, Willie Edwards and Marcellus Jackson put in 12 points apiece in the win. Jackson also pulled down nine rebounds and posted five blocks.
For Long Beach, Stephen Armstrong poured in a game-high 14 points, including four 3-pointers, while forward Chris Brown added 12 points and 12 rebounds.
Both Cerritos and Long beach will learn its first-round opponent for the playoffs on Monday when the seeding is announced.
In order to succeed in the post season, May believes that only a minor tune-up is necessary.
“We just have to sharpen up a bit. If we do a little bit better job at the line and on the boards, we can compete with anyone,” he said.
