After the Rio Hondo men’s basketball participated in the Miramar Tournament to start their new 2016-2017 season, the Roadrunners played at home for the first time this season to take on MiraCosta College.

The tournament, which took place Nov. 3-5 at San Diego Miramar College, saw Rio Hondo match up against Cerritos College, Santa Ana College and Southwestern College. Rio dropped their first game against Cerritos in a 77-74 loss, but managed to beat Santa Ana and Southwestern 64-60 and 67-54 respectively.

While it was a successful tournament for Rio winning two of three games, it would not be a successful homecoming as MiraCosta quickly seized control quickly with their perimeter shooting.

MiraCosta forward Brady Twomby fired from long range, hitting all four of his first three-point attempts and quickly sent the Roadrunners into a double digit deficit that made it hard to recover.

Joining Twomby in the scoring column was his teammate Brett Hollins who also was in double digit scoring by the time the first half was over, leaving Rio Hondo down by 42-30.

Rio Hondo head coach Mike Lowe said his team “didn’t execute very well” in the first half, but talked about three things that they wanted to focus on to start the second half.

Defending Twomby and Hollins much better, moving the ball better and going on a run were the three things Lowe mentioned to his team and the team responded by heeding his message.

Twomby did not score a basket in the second half until the six minute mark and Hollins was kept in check by multiple Rio defenders. The ball movement was much better, leading to open shots and a 18-9 run to begin the second half got the Roadrunners within one.

Rio Hondo forward Trevon Welch and guard Josiah Sotomayor tried their best to keep Rio Hondo in the game and get the lead, both scoring 15 points each but could not catch the Spartans, losing 81-70.

The Roadrunners could not get their perimeter game to be consistent, going 8-30 from three point range and shooting an overall 36.8% for the entire game.

DeShaun Carr, who averaged 15 points on 13 of 19 shooting during the Miramar Tournament, did not look to shoot the ball, finishing with 10 points on 2 of 5 shooting with six of those from the free throw line, four rebounds and two assists..

After the game, Lowe mentioned that they “did a better job of taking the two better players out and moved the ball a little better and we had a nice little run to get within one.”

“We were not able to sustain it and I think it was because of getting down early and we didn’t recognize their better players quick enough.”

With only one thing to improve for the Roadrunners after the loss to MiraCosta, Lowe said “ [their] focus to start the game.”

The Roadrunner’s focus will be on their next games in the El Camino Tournament at El Camino College and will face off against MiraCosta, Moorpark College and Santa Ana Nov. 17-19.