By Dalila Romero

The Riverside City College men’s basketball team lost their exhibition game against the Palomar College Comets 81- 64 on Oct. 15.

The Comets had come into the game aggressively on defense, which led to multiple Tiger fouls and turnovers.

The Tigers head coach Philip Mathews had noticed the need for improvement early in the game.

“We were horrible today, offensively, defensively, attitude wise, bad body language,” Mathews said. “Luckily it was only a scrimmage, so hopefully we can get back to the practice floor and correct some of those things.”

The Tigers were able to keep the game close and go into half time with only a deficit of 6 points.

“Take care of the basketball,” Mathews said. “Play with what we’ve done so far at practice, and those things did not happen.”

In the first half, the Tigers were focused on sticking to their gameplan.

“I stuck to the system, did what I thought was right,” sophomore forward Reggie Ward said. “Made sure I made the right decisions.”

RCC would come out of the locker room motivated. In the second half, the team played harder, gaining the lead multiple times.

“Play harder,” Mathews said. “Play with some passion.”

​​The Comets would soon pick up the momentum and go on a run to end the game, gaining a lead over the Tigers of 16 points.

“We need to go back to practice and work hard,” Ward said. “We need to understand what we need to do everyday.”

Despite the loss the Tigers were able to learn and utilize a lot about their weapons on their team.

“It is really important, it’s a team game,” freshman combo guard Tomi Adesiji said. “We can’t have one to two people doing everything, we need to have everyone doing everything.”

The Tigers will now take the time to regroup and prepare for their next game.

RCC will next take on Southwestern College at home on Oct. 29.