Men’s Water Polo: Vikings beat Cerritos for SCC title, get Regionals top seed

SOCAL REGIONALS BRACKET

Long Beach City College captured its 12th South Coast Conference title over the last 14 years thanks to an 11-9 win over Cerritos College on Saturday in the SCC final at Pasadena City College. One day later following the conference championship win, LBCC was awarded the top seed for next week's Southern California Regional Championships at nearby Cerritos.

In a high intensity championship final, Cerritos led 5-4 at halftime, but the Vikings scored a pair of goals to take a 6-5 lead into the third quarter. In a wild high-scoring fourth quarter, Cerritos came back from 9-7 to tie 9-9 on back-to-back goals from Miguel Garcia.

With 3:07 left the Vikings went ahead for good as LBCC picked up its sixth power play goal of the game on a shot by freshman Marino Fatovic (Dubrovnic, Croatia) to take a 10-9 lead.

Freshman Ikko Saito (Cerritos HS) had four goals to lead the Vikings while sophomore Jason Lee (Cerritos HS) added three goals. Freshman Lazar Andric (Herceg-Novi, Montenegro) posted 11 saves in goal for the Vikings.

In Thursday's semifinal, Long Beach cruised to a 20-7 rout over Chaffey College to earn its spot in the final. The Vikings led 13-0 at halftime and were never threatened.

12 different Vikings scored in the win with Ikko Saito leading with four goals and Damian Madrigal (Servite HS) had three. Andric posted three saves while sophomore Akio Saito (Cerritos HS) also had three saves and freshman Dustin Boren (Wilson HS) even saw time in goal and posted one save.  

No. 1 seed Long Beach takes a 22-2 overall record into the SoCal Regionals and has was 15 straight games. The Vikings opens their regional playoffs on Friday (Nov 15) against the winner of No. 8 Mt. San Antonio College and No. 9 Ventura College. A win in that game would put LBCC in Saturday morning's semifinal with the championship final set for later that afternoon.

The top two teams at the Northern and Southern California regionals will advance to the CCCAA State Championships set for November 22-23 at Riverside City College.

MEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL
Long Beach City 11, Cerritos 9

Score by Quarters
LBCC   3-1-2-6--11
CER     3-2-0-4--9

Long Beach Scoring: Ikko Saito 4, Jason Lee 3, Blake Grove 2, Nathan Pinckney, Marino Fatovic; Cerritos Scoring: Miguel Garcia 6, TJ Tijerina, Randy Baldwin, Albert Kim
Saves
LBCC: Lazar Andric 11
CER: Alfredo De La Mora 14

CHAMPIONSHIP SEMIFINAL
Long Beach City 20, Chaffey 7

Score by Quarters
CHA 0-0-1-6--7
LBCC 6-7-3-4--20

Chaffey Scoring: Schwartz 4, Sapp, Howell, Dominic Kirby
Long Beach Scoring: Ikko Saito 4, Damian Madrigal 3, Andrew Reynolds 2, Nathan Pinkney 2, Nemanja Petrovic 2, Blake Grove, Brock McColl, Jack Ellinthorpe, Cody Haney, Marino Fatovic, Ian Reyes, Tristan Brightenburg.
Saves
Chaffey: Chapman 8
LBCC: Lazar Andric 3, Akio Saito 3, Dustin Boren 1.