HUTCHINSON – Held to season-lows in both points and field goal percentage, the Cloud County Community College women's basketball team would be unable to overcome their offensive woes in a 101-35 road defeat to number seven nationally-ranked Hutchinson Community College at the Hutchinson Sports Arena Wednesday.
With the first half of the season in the books, Cloud County enters the holiday break with a 6-8 overall record and 1-4 mark in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference. The Blue Dragons are now 12-1 overall and remain atop the KJCCC with a perfect 5-0 conference mark.
It would be a quick 8-0 hole for Cloud County as the Blue Dragons would jump out and connect on two threes along with a transition layup to force a T-Bird timeout 1:38 into the ball game as Hutchinson would score the first 10 points of the game. CCCC would finally get on the board at the 6:10 mark of the first quarter with an Alyssa Castilleja triple, but the points would be far and few in between as Cloud County would trail 26-6 following the first quarter of action.
Points would continue to be at premium for Cloud County throughout the first half as Hutchinson would extend their lead by scoring 14 of the first 16 points of the second quarter with the lead eventually growing to a first-half high of 42-9 before the T-Birds would score 12 of the final 16 points to go into the locker room trailing 46-21.
Things would not get much better in the second half as the Blue Dragons would use a 33-6 third quarter advantage to go up 79-27 after 30 minutes of play on CCCC as Cloud County would be held without a point for the first 5:48 of the third period. Cloud County would continue to put up shots in the final 10 minutes of action to try and find any kind of offensive spark, but shots would refuse to fall as just eight points would be scored by the T-Birds in the fourth quarter to finish with a season-low 29 points on the evening.
Cloud County hit on just 18.9 percent (14-of-74) of their shots from the field in the loss and would go just four-for-13 (30.8 percent) from the charity stripe as it would be an off-shooting night for CCCC all-around. The T-Birds would grab 16 offensive rebounds compared to allowing just 10 to Hutchinson despite losing the overall rebound battle 57-43 while also being outscored in points off turnovers 23-7.
CCCC would be led in points by Jacy Dalinghaus who would score 13 points with five made field goals and assist on six of the other nine made buckets by the T-Birds, with Castilleja adding 10 points. LaKya Leslie would grab a team-best 12 rebounds and score five points while Kelsie Kelly grabbed nine total rebounds.
What's next?
Cloud County will have just over three weeks before their next game as the T-Birds will kick off the first of two home games as part of the first week of 2020 when they host Iowa Western Community College on Jan. 2 at 2 p.m. The game will mark the second and final meeting of the year between the T-Birds and Reivers as IWCC defeated CCCC 82-64 in Council Bluffs back on Nov. 16 in the first meeting.
--cloudtbirds.com--