Harbor Is No Match for Long Beach City : Colleges: The Seahawks’ poor play in first half proves to be their undoing, 97-88.

Harbor College fell behind early and could not recover in a 97-88 loss to Long Beach City College in a South Coast Conference men’s basketball game Saturday night at Harbor.

Harbor played poorly in the first half. The Seahawks (11-11) made numerous turnovers and missed several scoring opportunities.

Harbor regrouped near the end of the half and cut the deficit to five, but Long Beach City was able to hold off the charge to lead, 51-41, at halftime.

Long Beach (20-4) took a 15-point lead early in the second half, but Harbor rallied with an 11-2 run.

The Seahawks started rebounding, playing tighter defense and taking better shots.

“Our breakdown was in the first half,” Harbor Coach Carl Strong said. “We played extremely poorly and without a great deal of emotion.”

With six minutes, 12 seconds left in the game, Harbor’s Jerry Allen drove past two defenders for a layup that put Harbor within 81-80.

But Long Beach, with one of the league’s most powerful offenses, scored six unanswered points and took an 87-80 lead with 2:55 remaining.

“We have to be able to finish,’ Strong said. “We had the opportunity to take the lead and we didn’t. You’re not going to win a ballgame like that.”

The Seahawks made only 15 of 26 free throws.

“The only thing I can say about our free throw shooting is terrible, terrible, terrible!” Strong said.

Long Beach made 27 of 34 free throws and secured the victory by making six in the final minute.

Five Long Beach players scored in double figures. Sophomore guard Rodney Harris had 27 points and sophomore forward Jerry Davis had 24. Forward Kevin Beal added 17, guard Heath McCoy had 15 and forward Pat Thacke had 12.

Harbor forward Jerry Allen had a game-high 37 points and center Bassirou Nian had 19. Point guard David Boone, had 13 points and four rebounds.