Sophomore Luke Davis launched a single to bring Vikings baseball within two runs but came up short losing the last game of the season 5-3 to Cerritos on Friday.
“Those first innings we weren’t ready to play, we made a lot of mistakes on the mound and a lot of mistakes on the field, that’s not good,” head coach Casey Crook said.
Freshman Sean Lovett replaced sophomore Liam Taylor on the mound as Taylor’s day was over before the second inning came to an end.
“Coming in the second inning I always like bases loaded just because one pitch can get you out of it but it was a hard hit ball to third base, I mean there’s nothing you can really do about that,” Lovett said.
Lovett pitched one and a half innings putting up one hit, zero strikeouts, and one walk before being replaced in the fourth inning.
The first and second inning did not go the Vikings way as Cerritos came out swinging scoring a combined five runs, two which were scored off of multiple defensive errors by the Vikings allowing Cerritos to load the bases.
In the third inning the Vikings were able to strike back by gaining three runs off a double from Sophomore Xander McLaurin and a single from Sophomore Luke Davis.
Freshman Logan Carr pitched the fourth inning for the Vikings allowing zero runs, and one walk.
The Vikings went to the bullpen a total of two more times as freshman Benjamin Dorantes and sophomore Max Sasaki pitched the rest of the game.
The team was able to load the bases in the fifth inning but Cerritos’ defense was able to get the third out before the Vikings could score another run.
“We have to be better on defense number one, our pitching has to get sharper, we didn’t pitch very well when we had the count in our favor today, early in the game anyway, obviously our bullpen did pretty dang good,” Crook said.
With this loss the Vikings have an overall record of 27-13 and a Conference record of 16-8.
Long Beach City College has since won their first round of regionals to advance to super regionals.