For the second time in three games, Long Beach City College couldn't hold a late lead and dropped a 7-5 South Coast Conference game to visiting Cerritos College on Tuesday at Joe Hicks Memorial Field. Game 2 of the three-game series is Thursday at Cerritos with the finale back at LBCC on Saturday.

Tuesday's loss dropped the Vikings to 18-10 overall and creates a three-way tie for first place in the SCC at 10-3 with LBCC, Cerritos, and El Camino College.

LBCC went up 3-0 in the bottom of the first inning thanks to run-scoring ground outs by sophomores Tai Tiedemann (Poly HS) and Josh Williams (Wilson HS) and a RBI single by sophomore Jackson Foss (Wilson HS).

Cerritos got on the board in the third inning when they pulled off a successful double steal of second and home by Daniel Lopez and Jonathan Avila.

Long Beach was up 3-1 with starting pitcher Daniel Rocha (Narbonne HS) cruising until he ran into trouble in the top of the seventh. The Falcons sent nine batters to the plate and scored four runs to go ahead 5-3. But Long Beach answered with a pair of runs in the bottom of the seventh to tie up the game.

Tiedemann smacked a RBI single to drive in freshman Tristin Chamberlain (Millikan HS) and freshman Gavin Windes (St. John Bosco HS) doubled to the left-center gap to score Tiedemann.

Cerritos put together another big inning in the eighth to go ahead for good. Lopez got a RBI single before Mike Heenan's sacrifice fly drove in the final run of the game.

LBCC had the tying runs on base in the bottom of the eighth, but Tiedemann flew out to end the threat. Vincent Byrd II (Sacramento, CA/El Camino HS) lined a two-single in the ninth, but Cerritos' Jerald Johnston got freshman Mickey Miladinovich (Wilson HS) to ground out to end the contest.

Rocha had a quality start for the Vikings, going 6 2/3 innings while allowing three runs and seven hits in the no decision. At the plate, freshman Tony Monroy (Warren HS) went 3 for 4 to lead the Vikings.