Report by LBCC’s Chris Ruiz

The Long Beach City College women’s basketball team suffered a 73-40 non-conference loss to visiting Moorpark College on Tuesday night at the Hall of Champions Gym.

LBCC began the game with just five players and was missing leading scorer and rebounder Rayven Sellers because of an injury suffered at last weekend’s Imperial Valley tournament.

Despite its lack of numbers, the Vikings played tough during the opening 20 minutes. Moorpark held its biggest lead of the first half at 31-14 with 7:18 to go before Long Beach put together an 8-0 scoring run to get them within nine points (31-22) with 3:39 left in the half.

But Moorpark closed the half with a 9-0 run of its own to take a 40-22 advantage into the locker room at half time.

The second half was all Moorpark as fatigue finally set in on the outnumbered Vikings. The Raiders shot 61 percent from the field (14 of 23) and outscored LBCC 33-18 over the final half.

Freshman guard Vanessa Sullivan scored a team-high 15 points for Long Beach (3-10). Freshman forward Maria Loera led the Vikings with 10 rebounds to go with nine points and freshman guard Jocelyn Arce dished out nine assists and scored seven points.

 Center Reyneisha Mays led Moorpark (7-8) with 18 points.

 The Long Beach women return to action next Tuesday (Dec. 29) when the Vikings host East Los Angeles College in a 5:30 p.m. South Coast Conference interdivision game.