WALNUT — SBCC couldn’t finish its chances and struggled on defense Saturday, allowing top-seeded Mt. San Antonio to post a 3-1 victory in a Southern Cal Regional men’s soccer final.
The loss snaps the Vaqueros’ school-record 13-game winning streak and ends their season one game shy of the State Final Four.
“I’m devastated,” said star forward Mark Knight, who failed to score for the first time in seven games. “This was my last game for the college forever. We know we can play better than that. We just didn’t turn up today.
“Another day they would have gone in. Today, they weren’t going in.”
The Mounties (18-4-3) jumped ahead in the second minute when Joe Davis headed in a long free kick from the left sideline.
Waid Ibrahim, a freshman forward who’s accepted a scholarship to UCSB, tied it up in the 28th minute on an assist from Danny Molineaux. The Mounties put the game away by scoring twice in a three-minute span of the second half. The final goal came in the 66th minute after a bang-bang save by SBCC’s Ricky Placencia turned into a rebound goal by the Mounties’ Jairo Aquino.
The Vaqueros (20-5) finished with the second-most wins in school history and Knight became the school’s career goal leader with 59.
Knight, who suffered a shoulder injury in the 24th minute, misfired in a one-on-one situation late in the first half, chipping the ball over the goalie but wide left. In the 55th minute, he took a free kick from Craig Davies and hit the outside of the net. In the 83rd minute, Luke Chambers’ header nicked the crossbar and went over the goal.
“At critical times in the game, we just didn’t convert,” said SBCC coach John Sisterson. “You make your chances and throughout the season, you get a little bit of luck. Today, the Gods weren’t smiling on us.
“Defensive errors led to their second-half goals. We haven’t been doing that throughout the season. I don’t know if it was because it was our first playoff game away from home or what but the boys looked a little bit nervous.
“They have some talented players. On a different day, if we finish our chances, we could have beat them.”
SBCC won its first WSC title in eight years and made its furthest playoff run (winning two games) in 10 years.
“We had a great season and we set a number of records,” Sisterson concluded. “We had a lot of plus points. We lost one game here. A lot of people didn’t expect us to win. We did expect to win. We’re a better team than we showed today.”
