The Bakersfield College football team (6-4 overall, 2-3 National Northern Conference) will play the Long Beach City College Vikings (8-2 overall, 4-1 National Central Conference) in the Western State Bowl at 6 p.m. on Nov. 19 at Long Beach City College.

BC tied for fourth in the National Northern Conference with a record of 2-3. Long Beach finished as a tri-champion with Riverside and Mount San Antonio in the National Central league, each finishing with a 4-1 conference record. Long Beach is the only team that managed to beat Riverside this year.

Long Beach won 38-31 in overtime on Nov. 5 against Riverside, which is the number two seed in the Southern California playoffs. Riverside beat BC 45-7 earlier this year.

The Renegades finished the season on a two-game losing streak and will be going up against a Vikings team that has won four straight.

BC lost to Ventura College 49-21 on Nov. 5.

The game was well out of hand by the end of the first quarter with BC down 21-0. BC was down 35-7 at halftime.

Dalton Gallis started the game at quarterback for the Renegades, but Cesar De Leon came in toward the end of the third quarter for Gallis. Gallis went 15-for-23 passing for 173 yards with one touchdown and one interception.

De Leon went 6-for-13 passing with one touchdown. The Renegades had a tough time stopping Ventura’s offense, allowing a total of 590 yards on 315 rushing and 275 passing.

“You got to give them all the credit in the world. It’s hard to score when the other guys are on the field, but you got to give those guys credit, that’s the bottom line. I was just totally impressed with their quarterback; he’s as good as we’ve seen in a while. He’s a good player, he kept extending plays, and he threw the ball really well, and ran the ball when guys were covered. He did a really nice job; my hat is off to him,” said head coach Jeff Chudy.

“We got to circle the wagons and lick our wounds right now. It’s going to be a gut check. We’re going to find out how we want to finish this thing. We expect that our guys are going to come out and try to finish the season on a high note. We have the ability to go 8-3 and that’s a good year. Obviously we didn’t get to where we wanted to go, but we got to get to game seven first.”

The Renegades then lost to College of the Canyons in their regular season finale 14-10 on Nov. 12.

Canyons went up 14-10 with 4:05 left in the fourth quarter. The Renegades then drove all the way down to the Canyons 3-yard line with 20 seconds left in the game before De Leon threw an incomplete pass in the end zone on fourth down to essentially end the game.

BC struggled with penalties the entire game and ended up with 17 penalties for 157 yards. BC had four interceptions on defense, but they also lost two fumbles and struggled to maintain any consistency on offense.

Gallis started the game at quarterback, but De Leon came in for him at the start of the fourth quarter.

“The penalties that we had took points off the board, kept us on the field, took us off the field. They’re like turnovers. That in a nutshell, you can’t do that. There’s no excuse for it. We jeopardized the game because of our inability to play smart,” said Chudy.

“We didn’t move the ball till the last drive there. Penalties put us in a situation that we shouldn’t have been in, and that’s just really what it comes down to. We can’t play that way. We’ve got to be better than that.”