Cerritos College
Cerritos College • Norwalk, Calif.

Talon Marks

Cerritos College • Norwalk, Calif.

Talon Marks

Cerritos College • Norwalk, Calif.

Talon Marks

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Falcons depth shines in victory

Guard Malik Smith drives past LA Southwest defender on his way to the basket. Smith would play 27 minutes in the Falcons 65-63 victory over Southwest. Photo credit: Monique Nethington
Monique Nethington
Guard Malik Smith drives past LA Southwest defender on his way to the basket. Smith would play 27 minutes in the Falcons 65-63 victory over Southwest. Photo credit: Monique Nethington

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.”

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About the Contributors
Max Perez, Sports Editor
My name is Max Perez and I am a 19 year old student in my second year at Cerritos College. I am currently in my second semester as a member of the school newspaper, and this semester I am the Sports Editor. I chose to write about sports because it is my only interests, so a job where I only have to go to watch sports and then write about them is perfect. Im still not close to being an expert but i enjoy it so im going to keep at it.
Monique Nethington, Editor in Chief
My name is Monique Nethington and am the current Editor-in-Chief of Talon Marks. I am a Journalism major at Cerritos College and hope to one day work for the NFL network as a field reporter. In the fall, I will be attending Academy of the Arts University in San Francisco to get my BA in Communications and Media Technologies.
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Falcons depth shines in victory