Men’s Water Polo: Long Beach gets top seed for State Championships after Southern California title win over Golden West

STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS SCHEDULE/BRACKET

The Long Beach City College men's water polo team looks to capture the program's ninth state title when the Vikings open the 2013 California Community College Athletic Association (CCCAA) State Championship this weekend at Riverside City College.

The two-day State Championship tournament begins on Friday (Nov 22) as the South's top-seeded Vikings will face North No. 2 seed Diablo Valley College at 1 p.m. In the other semifinal, South No. 2 Golden West College will take on Northern California champion West Valley College at 10:30 a.m.

The semifinal winners will meet for the state title on Saturday (Nov 23) at 12 p.m. while the losers will play for third place at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday.

Under coaches Chris Oeding and Dave Kasa, the Long Beach men are making their 10th trip to the state championships in 12 years. LBCC looks to capture its first state title since 2006. Long Beach rides an 18-game winning streak into the state tournament and has a 25-2 overall record.

Friday will mark the first meeting of the season between LBCC and DVC. Diablo Valley brings a 20-5 overall record to the state championships. DVC is coming off a 10-6 loss to West Valley in the Northern California Championship final.

Long Beach split its two meetings with West Valley (22-14 overall) this season. LBCC opened the season on September 23 with a 9-7 loss at the West Valley tournament and defeated WVC 12-7 on Sep. 21 at the Cuesta Invitational.

The Vikings earned the South's top seed after an impressive 8-3 win over Golden West on Saturday in the SoCal championship final at Cerritos College. It was the Vikings' third win against Golden West (23-3) in four meetings this season.

In the Golden West victory, LBCC led 2-0 after the first quarter and was up 3-0 at halftime. The Rustlers finally broke up the shutout in the third but the Vikings went on to outscore them 5-3 in the second to pull off the win.

Sophomore Brock McColl (Wilson HS), freshman Nathan Pinkney (Granite Bay HS), and freshman Ikko Saito (Cerritos HS) all scored twice to lead Long Beach while freshman Lazar Andric (Herceg-Novi, Montenegro) had a stellar game in goal with 13 saves. Freshmen Blake Grove (Newport Harbor HS) and Andrew Reynolds (Los Alamitos HS) also scored goals for the Vikings.

Earlier in the day, LBCC secured the SoCal finals appearance with a dominating 10-4 win over Cuesta College in the regional semifinals. The Vikings stormed out to a 9-0 lead thanks to a six-goal second-quarter to put the game out of reach for the Cougars.

Freshman Marino Fatovic (Dubrovnic, Croatia) and sophomore Jason Lee (Cerritos HS) paced the Vikings' offense with three goals each. Freshman Jack Ellinthorpe (Granite Bay HS), Grove, Saito, and Reynolds also had goals. Andric posted six saves over the first three quarters before sophomore Akio Saito (Cerritos HS) took over in the fourth and had two saves.