Broncbusters top MCC women at home, 63-57

Garden City Community College came out quick Tuesday night against the McCook Community College women and never trailed in a 63-57 win in the Peter and Dolores Graff Events Center. MCC fought back to cut the GCCC lead to 59-57 in the final minute but couldn’t close out the game.

“That’s a really good Garden City team,” said MCC Coach Brandon Pritchett. “That’s the best team we’ve played of the three. Eastern Wyoming and Laramie County are good teams as well but Garden City is really athletic. They pressure, they make plays and they hit shots.”

The Broncbusters are coming off an opening weekend with wins on the road at Trinidad State and Otero and started fast against the Lady Indians scoring the first seven points of the game

“This team pressed, they fly around and are super athletic and I think we turned the ball over the first four possessions and didn’t really didn’t get our offensive set up until we got were down early,” said Pritchett.

Garden City led 11-4 at the midway point of the first quarter, stretched the lead to 11 at the 1:35 mark and led after the first 10 minutes, 18-11. MCC turned the ball over 18 times in the first half, but cleaned this up in the second quarter.

“We clawed back little-by-little and made it a game and really were a lot better defensively than we were our first two games and that’s one area we wanted to see improvement,” said Pritchett.

MCC outscored Garden City 18-15 in the second quarter and trailed at halftime 33-29.

“Once we settled down we were good,” said Pritchett.

The Lady Indians turned the table on fast break points midway through the third quarter with sophomore Johanna Gerlach (Hachborn, Germany) leading the comeback. Her layup at the 5:13 mark of the third period cut the GCCC lead to 39-37. MCC had two offensive possessions to tie the game but the Broncs tightened the defense and went up by four points 41-37.

Sophomore Miriam Wahlqvist (Helsingborg, Sweden) hit jumper with 3:15 left in the period to make it a 41-39 game. She hit four of eight shots from the field in the first half and both her shots in the second half.

“We talked a lot to Miriam about making shots around the rim and she did a better job of that and we started making some transition baskets off their press,” said Pritchett.

Garden City went on a 7-0 run over the final three minutes of the period to lead 48-39 heading into the final stanza.

Freshman point guard Mar Molina Munoz (freshman, Parets del Valles, Spain) picked up two fouls early in the game and picked up her third early in the third period but provided an offensive spark early in the four quarter.

“Mar got in foul trouble and we really didn’t get to see her until the fourth quarter and when she got in they couldn’t slow her down and she broke the press and got three or four baseline-to-baseline scoring runs there just by her speed. And that’s what she’s capable of but she’s got to stop fouling.”

After the Broncs led by 15 points with 7:56 left in the game, MCC closed the gap to 57-51 with 5:23 left in the game then a Wahlqvist bucket with 2:16 made it a 58-55 Garden City lead. Sophomore Laia Izquierdo Altimira (Barcelona, Spain) drove the lane and her basket closed the deficit to 59-57 with 43.8 seconds left but Garden City responded with a couple clutch scores to close out the win.

Wahlqvist finished with a team-high 13 points and seven rebounds. Molina Munoz finished with nine points. Gerlach scored 11 points.

Stephanie Nnabuihe (freshman, Newbridge, Ireland) came off the bench to pick up eight rebounds to lead the team to go along with three points. Izquierdo Altimira scored nine points.

“We reduced our turnovers to seven in the second half, but you can’t turn the ball over 25 times and win against teams of this caliber,” said Pritchett.

Garden City shot 41.1 percent from the field, made eight of 22 triples (36.4 percent) and went nine of 14 from the line (64.3 percent). The Broncs had 17 turnovers.

MCC shot 39.6 percent from the field, made two of seven 3-pointers (28.6 percent), hit on 13 of 19 free throws (68.4 percent) and held a 35-28 rebound edge.

“We have got to shoot the ball better, those all have to go up five to 10 percent for us to be successful,” said Pritchett.

Garden City improves to 3-0 on the season.

This weekend the 1-2 Lady Indians host the MCC Fall Classic with four women’s team competing Friday and Saturday.

“I’m excited about getting a Classic here with four quality teams,” said Pritchett. “We haven’t had a classic here in a while on the women’s side, so it’ll be nice to get two other teams in the region and one from Region 18,” said Pritchett.

The Classic opens Friday at 5:30 p.m. with North Platte (0-2) taking on Casper College (0-0). At 7:30 MCC will host Colorado Northwestern Community College (0-2), the team from Region 18.

On Saturday Colorado Northwestern plays North Platte at 1 p.m. followed by Casper vs. MCC at 3 p.m.

Up-to-date information about MCC women’s basketball including livestream links for home games, schedule, statistics, rosters, photos and more can be found on the MCC Athletics website, www.mccindians.com