Glendale Community College men’s basketball runs to another win
GLENDALE — When the Glendale Community College men’s basketball team saw an opportunity, it took it.
The Vaqueros had two opportunities to put some distance between them and Santa Monica College on Wednesday night in a Western State Conference South Division game. Both occurred in the first half when Glendale went on 12- and 17-point runs.
Those spurts helped Glendale open up big leads in the first half, advantages the Corsairs were never able to fully battle back from. Riding that momentum into the second half, the Vaqueros were able to roll to a 66-49 victory at home.
The Vaqueros (8-9, 4-1 in conference), ranked 13th in Southern California in the California Community College Athletic Assn., came into the game in a four-way tie for first place in the conference. One of those teams was Santa Monica (14-4, 3-2), which is No. 11 in SoCal.
“We don’t score a lot of points as a team, but we guard very well and I think we did a good job at doing that tonight,” Vaqueros Coach Vigen Jilizian said. “And when you guard well, you can jump out to some leads pretty quickly.
“Our guys did a great job in the game of just figuring out our plan and we put things in place and they really limited [Santa Monica’s] drives to the key. We wanted to force them to a one and done with their shots and we did that. I also thought we rebounded well.”
Despite having seven players 6-foot-6 or taller, compared to two for Glendale, Santa Monica lost the battle of the boards, 37-35.
In winning their fourth straight game, the Vaqueros had balanced scoring, receiving 12 points and nine rebounds by Kenneth Daniel, 12 points from Juwan Thomas, 10 points and six rebounds from Adrian Gutierrez, nine points from Cesar Reyes and eight points and six rebounds from Jeri Mask.
The runs Glendale made early on made the difference. After falling behind, 5-2, the Vaqueros scored 12 straight and had a 14-5 advantage with 14:24 remaining in the first half after a tip-in by Mask.
Following a three-pointer by Santa Monica’s Duncan Douglas (12 points, seven rebounds), Glendale embarked on a 17-0 run, capped by a bucket from Gutierrez and punctuating a 29-3 spurt that saw the Vaqueros’ lead balloon to 31-8 with 5:21 remaining in the half.
“Getting out to big leads early is what I feel is a key in helping us win games,” Thomas said. “When we get out to a lead like that we can play with anyone. When you can start off like we did, not digging ourselves a hole and having to play catch-up, we play a lot better.
“When you go on runs like we did in that first half, it can take a lot of wind out of the other team. When they see shot after shot going in, it can be tough for them to deal with and that can get them down. In turn, it gives us confidence and makes us want to play that much harder.”
The Vaqueros, who shot 48.4% in the first half, went into halftime with a 20-point cushion, 35-15. Santa Monica didn’t help its cause in the opening half, shooting 23.1% and missing all five of its free throws.
Glendale maintained its cushion for most of the second half, countering every Corsairs’ attempt to whittle down the lead. The closest Santa Monica would come was 17 points twice and both of those occurred with less than a minute remaining.
