MCC men hold off Lamar for first Region IX win

After dropping a pair of close Region IX south division games on the road over the weekend, the McCook Community College men’s basketball picked up their first Region IX division win Tuesday with an 86-83 win at home over Lamar Community College.

MCC Coach Dillon Hargrove said coming off a pair of tough losses on the road Friday and Saturday, his team needed a different mind-set and changed things up on the defensive end.

“Defensively we wanted to be better, we wanted to play our pace on offense and tried a few different things on defense,” said Hargrove.

The Indians raced to a 49-40 half-time lead and extended the lead to 17 points at the 17:32 mark but Lamar didn’t give up, closing the lead to 58-51 at the 14:27 mark and 67-65 with 9:10 left to play.

“We wanted to see fewer mistakes down the stretch, with this group, especially under pressure and we’ve been in tight games all year long and it comes down to that,” said Hargrove. “We need to get better in that situation, especially when we have the lead.”

Freshman Nate Coley (Little Rock, Ark.) poured in 36 points including seven 3-pointers to lead four players in double-figures.

“Man! Nate was great, we just could not take him out of the game,” said Hargrove.

The 5-10 guard from Little Rock, Ark. scored 28 first-half points, made 13 of 23 shots from the field and went seven-for-12 from the 3-point line, adding three assists and a pair of steals and played all 40 minutes.

Sophomore center (Tavarius Vinson, Chicago, Ill.) had a double-double with 11 points, 13 rebounds and added three blocked shots. Sophomore guards Madison Peaster (Little Rock, Ark.) and Dave Olaniyi (Newark, N.J.) both scored 11 points.

“Tavarius had an un-real stat-line and our guard group just hit the open shots when they needed to,” said Hargrove.

MCC shot 50.8 percent from the field and made 15 of 24 shots from the 3-point line (62.5 percent). In addition to Coley, Olaniyi made three of four 3-point shots, sophomore Norris Bourne Jr (Beaumont, Texas) hit three of five and scored nine total points. Freshman Jason Robinson (Waterbury, Conn.) made his only 3-point shot, and freshman Vladimir Brkovic (Uzice, Serbia) was one of two from distance.

Lamar shot 34.6 percent from the field and made 12 of 33 from distance (36.4 percent).

“We tried to take some of their guards out of their game – they’ve got some really good players we wanted to take Chance White out of his game and he ended up with just nine points,” said Hargrove.

Both teams were credited with 43 rebounds, MCC had 16 turnovers and LCC had 11.

Lamar falls to 2-13 overall and 0-2 in Region IX south play.

The Indians improve 6-1 at home, 9-10 overall and 1-2 in the region standings.

On Sunday MCC hosts Southeast Community College in a Nebraska Community College Athletic Conference game at 4 p.m. The Bobcats are 6-14, having opened NCCAC play with an 88-75 loss at North Platte Tuesday. 

MCC concludes its three-game homestand Tuesday, Jan. 28 hosting Western Nebraska at 7:30 p.m. The Indians close out January on the road at Sterling, Colo. Jan. 31 for a Region IX South game against Northeastern Junior College.

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