Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – Action from Friday night’s game.

The Corsairs knew it was going to be a tough matchup against City College of San Francisco on Friday night and it turned out to be exactly that.

The Rams, who are the top-ranked team in the state and the most dominating JC program in California in recent times, traveled to Eureka to play College of the Redwoods in men’s basketball and won 99-71.

Playing in front of a large home crowd, the visitors came out strong and quickly took control, opening up a 47-25 lead going into halftime.

“I think we all wish we could get a do-over of the first 10 minutes of the game,” CR head coach Ryan Bisio said. “We needed to make some shots early to establish our confidence and match them, and even though we got some pretty good looks we weren’t able to convert.”

Mason Mottashed, who is enjoying a big season, led the home team with 19 points, while teammate Brandon Lucas added 12 points.

The Rams defense is the best the Corsairs will face all year.

“SF applies a shocking degree of pressure,” Bisio said. “For the most part, we handled it okay, but the spells where we didn’t caused massive separation in the score.

“They come at you in waves and their spurts are just devastating.”

Both teams were effective from downtown, with CR hitting nine 3-pointers and San Francisco hitting 10.

The Corsairs certainly had some good moments going up against the powerhouse Rams, who have appeared in five of the last seven state championship games and won three of them.

“When the game was a half-court five-on-five game, I thought we looked good and played with admirable physicality,” Bisio said. “It’s the turnovers that ran them out, which we simply couldn’t muster the firepower to overcome.”

The Rams improved to 11-0 with the win, while CR is now 8-4.

But playing such a dominating team should also help prepare the Corsairs for their upcoming Golden Valley Conference schedule.

“Hats off to SF for coming up here,” Bisio said. “Even prepping for them this week made us a better team. I know it didn’t show up last night, but I’m hopeful this experience will pay dividends down the road.”

The Corsairs will be back in action on Saturday afternoon with another tough matchup against Cabrillo, which made the state elite eight last season.

Tip off is set for 3 p.m.