Community College Basketball : Regarding Consistency, Cerritos Has It Over Fullerton

The good news for opponents of Cerritos College is that most of the key players from last season’s South Coast Conference championship team have graduated.

The bad news is that their replacements are so good, this year’s team may be even better. Cerritos is a school where they don’t have rebuilding years.

Cerritos begins conference play tonight against Fullerton (at Cerritos, 7:30) in a familiar postion: as the favorite. The Falcons are 9-3 but could be 11-1. Two of the losses came at the hands of Taft and City College of San Francisco, each considered among the best in the state. And in both of those games, Cerritos was without its leading scorer, guard Joe Yezbak.

The Falcons have balance (four starters averaging double figures), one of the top guards in the conference (Yezbak) and tradition (two consecutive conference titles and a state championship in 1983). Coach Jack Bogdanovich, beginning his third year at Cerritos, isn’t one to talk up his teams, so when he says the Falcons are good, you have to listen.

“Right now, I’d say this team is of the caliber of my first two here,” he said. “In 1982-83, we were 32-3 and last year we were 26-7. I think we have the ability to beat any team in the state.”

Prior to the start of the season, Fullerton Coach Roger See was thinking the same thing about his team. At that time, the Hornets were regarded as the conference co-favorite along with Cerritos. But six weeks and 13 games later, Fullerton is no longer considered among Southern California’s community college basketball elite.

The Hornets are, without a doubt, a team with considerable talent, yet that is hard to decipher when you look at their disappointing 6-7 record. The problem plaguing Fullerton has been its consistent inconsistency.

Fullerton’s performance last week in the Santa Ana Tournament is a perfect example of what’s wrong with the Hornets. In a first-round game, Fullerton went out and beat a strong Los Angeles Valley team, 76-61, and then lost to a school it should have beaten, Allan Hancock, 71-66, in a semifinal game two nights later.

“If I had an answer to why we’ve been so inconsistent, it would have been solved by now,” See said.

If Fullerton is to have any chance at upsetting Cerritos in the conference opener as it did last year, the Hornets will have to contain Yezbak, who is fully recovered from an ankle injury and has averaged 19 points per game, and 6-8 forward Brian Coleman, who has averaged 15.8. The Hornets are led by forwards Michael Long and Jon Samuelson.

In other community college games starting at 7:30:

South Coast Conference

Saddleback at Mt. San Antonio--With Fullerton off to a bad start, the Gauchos (10-4) and Mounties (13-1) have emerged as the two top challengers to Cerritos. Saddleback is led by, perhaps, the best player in the conference, guard Alexander Hamilton, and forward Eric Cornly.

Cypress at Orange Coast--Orange Coast lost to Cypress three times last year, twice in conference and once in the Shaughnessy Playoffs, but one player makes the Pirates the favorite tonight: Shaughn Ryan. The 6-5 sophomore guard/forward has averaged 18 points, 6.6 rebounds and 3 steals per game and has made 57% of his field goal attempts and 84% of his free throws in leading Orange Coast to a 9-5 record.

Golden West at Compton--The Rustlers are off to a surprising 7-6 start and are led by forward Marc Lorigan, who has averaged 18.5 points per game.

Nonconference

Pomona-Pitzer JV at Santa Ana