The Bakersfield College men’s basketball team looked for a huge upset when it played the undefeated Citrus College Owls, but in overtime the Owls fought back for a 115-100 victory to remain undefeated.
The ‘Gades were looking to play hard and compete against Citrus. “[To win], that’s all I could think about. To win,” said freshman Jamar Harrison, who scored 14 points.
According to Citrus College coach Rick Croy, they did just that. “I think we got outplayed for 40 minutes. They outplayed us and they were ready for us.” The score at halftime had BC up by 17 points. Croy said Citrus was frustrated and knew they needed to get back in the game.
The BC team said they were expecting a comeback fight from Citrus. With a 3-pointer taken by Buchi Awaji of Citrus in the last two seconds of the second half, the game was tied 95-95 and went into a five-minute overtime.
“It wasn’t an ideal shot. They played great defense and we are just fortunate that the ball went in,” said Croy. BC ran into a few problems in overtime. “On defense we gave up too many easy shots and on offense it just became a fouling match,” said BC coach Richard Hughes.
With 32 fouls against BC and three of their players fouling out, the men struggled with maintaining their lead in the second half.
“We were just on the wrong end of them [fouls] and it hurt us,” said Hughes.
Some think the game would have turned out differently had the referees let the men play basketball without so many fouls.
Gary Felices, a sophomore who scored 17 points, said, “They lost the game for us.” The fouls had an impact on the score for both Citrus and BC. “We would have beaten them by 20,” said Harrison.
The next game against Citrus on Feb. 23 will be just like their last meeting: fast paced, high scoring and high energy.
Hughes said it will definitely be an action packed game. “These guys are marking that day on their calendars. They want a rematch. They want to win.” Citrus knows there will be a fight from BC the next time they play.
“They are going to come after us,” said Croy. “We were very lucky, very, very lucky.”
Until then the ‘Gades say they need to get the loss out of their heads and win.
Felices said, “We are going to take our frustrations out on the next teams.”