With a chance to complete the three-game sweep against Bakersfield College on Saturday, the Cerritos College baseball team came up short, 7-3. The loss drops the Falcons record to 6-2 on the season, as they will continue with three more games on the road next week. First is is a 1:30 p.m. game at Cypress College on Wednesday.

Trailing 2-0 heading into the top of the fourth inning, Cerritos was able to cut their deficit in half when freshman outfielder Owen Martin (Narbonne HS) led off with a solo home run against incoming relief pitcher Ryan Morales.

However, the Renegades (2-3) got the run back against freshman starting pitcher Nolan Patterson (Long Beach Millikan HS), who tossed the first five innings and allowed three runs on nine hits and struck out four batters.

One aspect of the Falcons game has been their inability to make contact, as they struck out 16 times on Saturday after whiffing 15 times the day before against Bakersfield. They loaded the bases in the top of the first inning with one out, but the next two batters struck out, and then loaded the bases once again in the second inning, but could not push a run across the plate. It was more of the same in the third period, as Cerritos stranded the bases loaded and by the time the game was over, had left 15 runners on base.

They drew to within 4-3 in the top of the eighth inning when freshman first baseman Wyatt Ormonde (Long Beach Millikan HS) doubled home freshman pinch-runner Tiery Smith (Los Alamitos HS) and sophomore outfielder Diego Orozco (Long Beach Wilson HS), who reached base with his third walk of the day. The final out of the inning also came when Ormonde tried to stretch the double into a triple.

Bakersfield put the game out of the reach in the bottom of the eighth inning when they scored three unearned runs against freshman relief pitcher Mateo Heredia (El Segundo HS), who opened the game at third base and had a pair of hits on the day at the plate. A one-out error came around to score, with the final run of the game coming on a balk.