Men’s Water Polo: Vikings win overtime thriller to claim SCC title, get No. 3 seed for SoCals

The Long Beach City College men's water polo team successfully defended its South Coast Conference title on Saturday, but it wasn't easy. Long Beach needed to come from behind late twice to beat Cerritos College 10-9 in the finals of the SCC tournament at the Falcons' home pool. For coaches Chris Oeding and Dave Kasa, it was their sixth straight SCC title and 10th over the past 11 seasons.

Long Beach, seeded No. 1 at the conference tourney, needed just a pair of wins over the weekend to qualify for the Southern California Championships.

The Vikings opened their tournament play with an easy 12-2 win over No. 4 Chaffey. Long Beach opened the game by scoring seven goals in the first quarter and was never challenged. Nine different Vikings scored with freshman Julian Laffiche leading the way with three goals.

It was a much different story in Saturday's championship final. Cerritos was up by as many as three goals in the second half before Long Beach rallied to take the lead in the final minute of the fourth quarter.

But Cerritos tied the game with 18 seconds left to send it to overtime. Cerritos once again jumped ahead in the first overtime period only to see the Vikings win it with goals in the second overtime. Freshman Eric Doyle tied the game with 2:26 to go and freshman Tristan Winterhalter scored the game-winner, his lone goal of the game, with 1:27 left to give the Vikings the thrilling 10-9 win.

Freshman Nemanja Jokanovic led LBCC with six goals in the win.

Following the SCC championship victory, the Vikings were awarded the No. 3 seed for this weekend's Southern California Championships at Cuesta College.

Golden West earned the top seed, followed by Cuesta (2), LBCC (3), Cerritos (4), Mt. San Antonio (5), Fullerton (6), Riverside (7), San Diego Mesa (8), Grossmont (9), and Palomar (10).
 
Long Beach enters the tournament with a 19-7 overall record. LBCC will face Fullerton on Friday (Nov. 12) at 4:30 pm.

A win on Friday would send LBCC to the semifinals on Saturday to play the winner of Cuesta vs. Riverside/Palomar at 12:15 pm. The championship final is scheduled for 4 pm on Saturday with the third-place game set for 5:15 pm. The top three teams at the SoCal Regionals advance to the CCCAA Water Polo State Championships at American River College in Sacramento on November 18-20.