Facing its toughest competition of the season, the Long Beach City College men's water polo team suffered a pair of losses at the Pepperdine Invitational in Malibu on Saturday.

The Vikings opened the day with an 11-5 exhibition loss to host Pepperdine University and then fell 9-6 to rival Golden West College to close the day.

LBCC actually jumped out to an early 2-0 over Pepperdine, who entered the day ranked No. 8 in the NCAA Division I national rankings. Sophomores Brock McColl (Wilson HS) and Jason Lee (Cerritos HS, pictured) scored before the Waves answered with a pair of goals to tie the game at 2-2 after the first quarter.

Freshman Andrew Reynolds (Los Alamitos HS) scored a goal at the 7:18 mark in the second to give LBCC a 3-2 lead, but Pepperdine put the game out of reach with four unanswered goals to jump ahead 6-3.

Lee added another goal just moments before halftime and freshman Nathan Pinkney (Granite Bay HS) closed out the scoring for the Vikings with a third-quarter goal.

Freshman Lazar Andric (Herceg-Novi, Montenegro) posted eight saves in goal for Long Beach over three quarters.

The state's top two community college teams faced off in the final game of the tourney. Just two weeks ago, the Vikings knocked off the Rustlers 6-3 at the Cuesta Invitational final, but this time second-ranked Golden West rallied late to defeat No. 1 Long Beach 9-6.

LBCC got off to a fast start with a pair of goals by freshman Marino Fatovic (Dubrovnic, Croatia) to open the game. Reynolds' goal at the 2:52 mark in the second quarter gave the Vikings a 5-3 advantage but Golden West narrowed the gap with a goal by Ari Marks with two seconds left before halftime.

The second half was all Golden West as the Rustlers outscored the Vikings 5-1. Fatovic's third goal of the game tied the score at 6-6 at the 2:59 mark in the third quarter, but Golden West closed out the win with the final three goals of the game.

Freshman Blake Grove (Newport Harbor HS) and Ikko Saito (Cerritos HS) also scored for LBCC. Andric did all he could to keep the Vikings in the game as he posted 14 saves.

Long Beach returns to action on Wednesday (Oct 9) when it travels to El Camino College for a 4:15 pm South Coast Conference game.

Photo by Chris Ruiz