MOORHEAD – The Northwest Mississippi Community College basketball team (18-11, 11-5) earned a crucial win to secure a home game in the MACCC postseason with a convincing 116-102 win over Mississippi Delta Community College (8-15, 2-12), securing their first home postseason games since they hosted the MACJC Tournament in the 2017-18 season.
"This year we had a little adversity with losing Dakota and some other guys, but we just found a way with everyone stepping up, so I'm just so proud of our guys," Head Coach John Redman, who is in his first season in charge of the program, and as a head coach. "
One thing I can say is we play really, really hard, they just compete and don't care what the score is or who we are playing, and that's a testament to the guys we have in our program."
The Rangers found themselves down in a 13-11 before an 11-0 run was triggered by three straight three pointers from Ladarius Brown on his way to eleven first half points and 20 points in the game.
Up 22-13, the Rangers continued to shoot well from the field, making their first five threes of the game and pushing the lead to double figures by the end of the first and second media time outs.
The rest of the first half settled into a back and forth that saw the Northwest offense responding to several runs and not allow the Trojans to close the gap to less than eight, finishing off with a 60-49 lead at the half.
Northwest had to find new ways to score at the opening of the second half but found it with consistent early trips to the foul line where they would go 9-10 in the first four minutes of the second half, using that push the lead up to 75-61.
Mississippi Delta answered back with their strongest push of the game, trimming the game to a 77-72 score after the turnover bug bit the Rangers, but after a timeout by Redman, the offense returned to form, immediately running off a 16-1 run to not only answer but put the game away by going up 93-73, eventually growing to 101-87 for a game high lead of 24 points.
"I tried to get the guys refocused and realigned with our goals," Redman said of the timeout. "Basketball is a game of runs and it's really hard when you get big leads and to sustain that kind of energy and effort, but we were quickly able to regroup and got right back up."
Both sides settled into trading points and the Rangers punched a ticket to a home game as the eight seed with the 116-102 win.
The Rangers will get to play at Howard Coliseum one more time on Thursday afternoon with Southern University – Shreveport on docket as the ninth seed in the Region 23 tournament.
The winner of that game will play on Saturday at Itawamba Community College after the Indians secured the #1 overall seed after winning the MACCC regular season.
Northwest was led in scoring by 21 points off of the bench for Chancellor Terry. They picked up another 20 from Brown who joined Terry to combine on a 16-26 night from the field. Houston Cunningham picked up 20 as well and was a perfect 7-7 from the foul line and Demetrius Duffy had another double double with 16 points and 10 rebounds.
As a team, Northwest shot well from three again, going 13-34 from beyond the arc and they capitalized from the foul line by making 25-30 chances for 83 percent.
Game time has been set for 6:00 P.M. for Thursday's opening round game of the Region 23 tournament.
- Article credit Caleb Burggraaf, NWCC Sports Information.
