CONCORDIA -- Playing in their regular-season finale and non-conference finale while honoring six sophomores, the Cloud County Community College men's basketball team would put together a complete team effort to win by a score of 86-78 over Iowa Western Community College inside of Arley Bryant Gymnasium on Friday.
The win allows Cloud County to split the home and home regular-season series with the Reivers and improve to 10-20 overall while the IWCC falls to 16-14 overall with both teams heading into postseason play next week.
"First off I want to say that the character our players have shown throughout this season is second to none and I'm really happy as they earned this win tonight" said head coach Jordan Altman in a post-game interview. "I told them in the locker post-game that we simply didn't make the mistakes that would cost us a game tonight but did enough to earn a victory." "We didn't have anyone go out and do anything special and take the game over, but we played as a team and had a near mistake-free final five minutes which ended up being the difference in the game." "The funny thing about us is that we've felt that so many of our issues this season have been self-inflicted so if we can clean up our own mistakes then we're going to have a better opportunity in games regardless of who we play." "Tonight we saw everyone contribute in ways that may not show in the box score, but our players made plays and followed the game plan that we put in place as it was truly a team-effort tonight.
Cloud County would find themselves in an early hole as Iowa Western would score six of the first eight points to take a 6-2 lead before seeing back-to-back CCCC buckets tie things up at 6-6. The Reivers would respond with a Josiah Strong triple to reclaim the lead and score seven of the next nine points to build a five-point advantage. Iowa Western would continue to build upon their lead throughout the opening 10 minutes of action, going up by as many as nine at 19-10 and again at 21-12 as 19 of IWCC's 21 points would come from Strong and Caleb Huffman. Out of the media timeout with 9:29 left in the first half, Cloud County would use a 6-2 surge to cut the lead down to five at 23-18 and force a Reiver timeout to try and kill the T-Bird momentum. The timeout by Iowa Western would prove to be effective as an 8-2 Reiver run would give IWCC a double-digit lead at 31-20 with six minutes left before intermission. Cloud County would go on to trail 33-22 with 4:01 remaining in the first half but go on to score the final nine points of the first half as five of the final nine points would come at the charity stripe to make things a 33-31 halftime deficit for CCCC.
The first Cloud County lead of the night woudl come in the opening minute of the second half as the T-Birds and Reivers would trade points to see the first lead changes of the night. Following an IWCC triple, Cloud County would begin to match the Reivers point-for-point to keep things at a manageable deficit. Back-to-back buckets from sophomore Chad Vincent-Simon would tie things up at 44-44 and force Iowa Western to burn another timeout momentum would once again begin to shift in favor of the T-Birds. Seven of the next nine points would be scored by Iowa Western as the Reivers would go back up five at 51-46, but CCCC would have a response by getting a pair of Jay Lewis jumpers and a Michael Ozomah bucket to go back up 52-51 with 13:02 remaining. Things would then become back-and-forth for the next few minutes until four quick points by the T-Birds right before the media timeout would stake Cloud County to a 59-55 lead with 9:58 left in the contest.
Iowa Western would continue to battle with Cloud County, regaining the lead at 64-63, but a Vincent-Simon mid-range jumper would put Cloud County back up by a point. Following a layup from IWCC, Cloud County would score the next five points of the contest to go up 70-66 with just over five minutes remaining and manage to fend off Iowa Western from tying things up over the next three-plus minutes of action. Defensive stops would then allow Cloud County to become the aggressors on offense and draw fouls to put players on the free throw line and help CCCC go on a 6-2 spurt to take an 80-75 lead with 2:29 left. The T-Birds would close things out with the two factors that helped them to the lead, relying on defense and points at the free throw line to pull away and earn the eight-point victory.
A plus-31 advantage (51-20) in rebounds for CCCC would help the T-Birds throughout the night as Cloud County would also score all 17 second-chance points in the game and also snag a 44-34 difference in points in the paint. Iowa Western would wind up shooting 49.1 percent (28-of-57) from the field in the game while Cloud County would hit on 30-of-71 (42.3 percent) of their shots and 85.7 percent (24-for-28) from the free throw line.
Nine players would score for the T-Birds in the first half as part of 10 players scoring in the game led by a team-high 23 points from Lewis. Three other Cloud County starters would also reach double-figures, with Vinent-Simon (15 points, Iyen Enaruna (14 points, and DJ Sims (11 points) combining to go 16-for-18 (88.9 percent) from the free throw line.
What's next?
Cloud County will have to wait until the conclusion of Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference play tomorrow evening before finding out who their first-round NJCAA Region VI Tournament opponent will be. The T-Birds will be on the road for their game on Wednesday with an opponent and game-time yet to be determined.
--cloudtbirds.com--