Every team in every sport at every school works all season to get the opportunity the Long Beach City College football team has this Saturday: to host a championship game.<\/p>\n
The Vikings will welcome Ventura College to Veterans Memorial Stadium at 6 p.m., with a lot on the line. A win would give LBCC an outright conference championship\u2014they clinched a share of it last week\u2014as well as a guaranteed berth in the state playoffs as one of the top four teams in Southern California.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s simple for us,\u201d LBCC coach Brett Peabody told us. \u201cWin and we\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Vikings (7-2) are having one of their best seasons since Peabody arrived, including three exciting one-score wins. LBCC is on a five-game win streak dating back to September, but they need a win Saturday to make this the season they want it to be.<\/p>\n
Since Saturday is \u201cYouth Sports Night\u201d for the Vikings, any youth player or coach in uniform will be admitted free of charge for what\u2019s sure to be a great game.<\/p>\n
LBCC has one of the best players anywhere in California in D\u2019Anthony Jones, a dominant freak-of-nature sophomore linebacker who\u2019s 6\u20192\u201d, 255 pounds. Jones is the biggest hitter in the state, but packs speed as well as punch. In last weekend\u2019s win over College of the Canyons, Jones had eight tackles, two sacks and three interceptions, one of which he ran back for a touchdown. It\u2019s an insane stat line but one we\u2019ve come to expect from Jones, who has scholarship offers pouring in.<\/p>\n
After LBCC\u2019s win, we\u2019ll find out Sunday about the state playoffs or a Bowl Game.<\/p>\n
Long Beach State Basketball<\/strong><\/p>\n One of our favorite sports-isms is \u201cpotential is a dirty word,\u201d a true statement if ever we\u2019ve heard one. When a coach tells you at the beginning of the season that their team has potential, what they\u2019re usually telling you is that their team isn\u2019t very good.<\/p>\n And yet, the \u201cpotential\u201d trap is one that we all fall into from time to time. At last weekend\u2019s Long Beach State Homecoming doubleheader, the Beach men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams both won, with the men beating the University of San Diego and the women dispatching NAIA foe Westcliff.<\/p>\n \u201cHey!\u201d we told each other. \u201cThese teams have potential!\u201d<\/p>\n The Long Beach State men team in particular was impressive in their win as well as in a close loss to UCLA in their season opener, a game they were expected to lose by nearly 20 but lost by four.<\/p>\n And yet!<\/p>\n There was the Beach on Tuesday evening this week at Stanford, getting blown out, 86-58. Head coach Dan Monson said he was disappointed his team wasn\u2019t more ready to compete, a statement we wholeheartedly agree with especially since things only get tougher for LBSU (1-2) which visits No. 18 St. Mary\u2019s, Thursday night.<\/p>\n The Beach women visited UCLA on Thursday afternoon and ended up losing 86-51. LBSU (1-2) hosts Utah State on Monday evening in the Pyramid.<\/p>\n Senior Night Adieu<\/strong><\/p>\n This hasn\u2019t been the season the women\u2019s volleyball team at Long Beach State was hoping for, as the team sits at 10-15 overall and 7-6 in the Big West. The five-time national championship program continues to struggle through a long rebuild under coach Joy McKienzie-Fuerbringer.<\/p>\n The team finishes their home schedule this week as they host UC Santa Barbara on Friday and Cal Poly on Saturday, with Senior Night festivities bidding farewell to a trio of great players: Hailey Harward, Kjersti Norveel and Yizhi Xue.<\/p>\n The team\u2019s season finale will come next week at Hawaii. It hasn\u2019t been a great season for the Beach, but a trip to Honolulu in November isn\u2019t a bad consolation prize.<\/p>\n LBCC Water Polo, Volleyball<\/strong><\/p>\n The state playoffs take a long time at the Junior College level, as the LBCC volleyball and water polo teams have to go through separate tournaments for their conferences, Southern California regionals and then the actual state bracket.<\/p>\n Things are going well for LBCC, as the women\u2019s volleyball team (19-6) will play in Saturday\u2019s conference semifinals at home against Pasadena at 5 p.m.<\/p>\n The men\u2019s water polo team (26-2) is traveling to Riverside College for a Saturday morning (9 a.m.) regional playoff game against the Tigers. The women\u2019s water polo team (23-5) will be at Riverside Saturday at 3:15 p.m. for a regionals game against Citrus.<\/p>\n State championship tournaments for both water polo teams would be next Friday and Saturday at Golden West College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Vikings will welcome Ventura College to Veterans Memorial Stadium at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":17098,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[715],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[199],"class_list":["post-6558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-college-sports-notebook","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6558"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=6558"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}