CONCORDIA – Taking advantage of 26 turnovers and 17 second-chance points, the Cloud County Community College women's basketball team would give head coach Brett Erkenbrack a 73-51 home victory over Dodge City Community College in his 1,000th career game as head coach of the T-Birds on Wednesday.
The victory moves CCCC to 3-1 overall and 2-1 in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference while the Conquistadors slip to 2-2 overall and 1-2 in KJCCC action. In his 32nd year at the helm of the T-Birds, Erkenbrack hits the career coaching milestone while now holding an overall record of 684-316 while coaching CCCC.
Points would be at a premium in the opening minutes of the contest as both Cloud County and Dodge City would face offensive struggles with just eight total points being scored in the first four minutes of action. With the game tied at 4-4, Derin Akdeniz would give the T-Birds the lead with a three that would spark an 8-2 T-Bird run to give CCCC a 12-6 lead with just over two minutes left in the first quarter. The Conquistadors would battle back with a pair of buckets to get things knotted up at 12-all before a Le'Yanna McGinnis free throw in the final seconds of the period would allow the T-Birds to go up 13-12 after one-quarter of action.
A Dodge City free throw 1:26 into the second would force yet another tie at 13-13, but the T-Birds would have a response with six straight points as part of a 12-4 run to push the lead out to eight at 25-17 with 4:22 left in the half. The two squads would then go back and forth on the offensive end of things with Dodge City managing to score eight of the 15 points to see CCCC hold a 32-25 halftime lead.
The Conquistadors would make an early push in the third quarter to try and cut into the T-Bird lead, but Cloud County would once again have responses on their offensive trips down the court as the halftime lead would never fall below five before an Alyssa Castilleja triple extended the lead back to eight a 39-31. Cloud County would then score eight of the next 10 points to take their first double-digit lead of the contest and hold a 47-33 lead with 3:48 left in the third quarter as the score would balloon to a 55-37 ballgame heading to the fourth.
Looking to close things out and avoid a repeat of Saturday's late stand, the T-Birds would go up 22 at 59-37 before seeing the Conquistadors rattle off seven straight points to pull back within 15 at 61-45 with 7:01 remaining in the game. CCCC would quickly push their lead back out to the 22-point margin over the next 2:35 before taking their largest lead of the game with 3:23 remaining and putting things on cruise control to close out their second-straight conference win.
In addition to a commanding 51-34 rebounding edge and 14-4 lead in fast break points, the T-Birds would make the most of a 20-of-28 (71.4 percent) free throw performance while seeing the Conquistadors go just nine-of-17 (52.9 percent) from the charity stripe. 24 of Cloud County's 51 rebounds would come on the offensive side of things, including 13 in the first half.
McGinnis would finish with a game-high 25 points and 11 rebounds while Akdeniz would pitch in a career-best 15 points off the bench. Rori Cox added 10 points in her T-Bird debut to put three Cloud County players in double-figures with two more players scoring eight (Branda Boakye and Sydni Keys).
What's next?
Cloud County will put a two-game winning streak on the line Saturday when they travel to Hutchinson for a 5:30 PM tip-off. The number-11 ranked Blue Dragons will be coming off a loss for the first time this season following a 56-51 road defeat to number-25 Butler.
--cloudtbirds.com--