MCC men open season with 83-81 loss to Colby

The McCook Community College men's basketball team opened the season Monday at home and lost an 83-81 decision to Colby Community College.

 "We just couldn't extend at all and credit to them," Brandl said. "They stuck with it and I thought they did a better job of controlling the highs and lows of the game." The coach thought his guys got sped up at times and took ill-advised shots when they didn't need to.

McCook led 69-68 with 4:09 left in the game, when Colby's Ronald Mitchell hit 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions to give the Trojans a five-point lead they never relinquished.

 "They hit some tough shots too, but when you mess up two ball screens with their best shooter late in the game that's hard to overcome," Brandl said. "They didn't make those mistakes and we did."

MCC was without returning all-region point guard Damien Perry, 6-11 post Ezichi Kalu, and shooting guard Mykel Thomas to start the season. The coach is hopeful all three will be back and healthy for the weekend.

 "From an effort standpoint, that wasn't why we lost this game," Brandl said. "I thought we played hard and got a lot of hard minutes from our guys, especially being short-handed like we are."

Colby won the rebounding battle 45-31.

"We definitely could have used our big guy tonight but our guys who were out here battled really hard and I'm proud of that, we just have to find ways to be smarter and make better decisions with the basketball," Brandl said.

MCC had four turnovers at halftime and then turned the ball over nine times in the second half.

"It seemed like every time we had a stop or had something going we turned it over or gave up a big rebound and that's pretty disappointing because in the pre-season we've been pretty good rebounding the basketball," Brandl said. "We just got beat up tonight."

Second-year freshman DaMiene Boles Jr. (Dayton, Ohio) led MCC with 26 points. Julian Lual (Calgary, Alberta) had 22 points and 10 rebounds. He is also a second-year freshman. Shemar Dennis (Worcester, Mass.) chipped in 12 points for MCC.

MCC shot 39.4 percent from the floor, made 11 of 23 shots from the 3-point line (42.3 percent), and 18 of 26 free throws (69.2 percent).

Colby was 52.5 percent from the floor, 30.4 percent on 23 3-pointers, and 56 percent on 25 free throws.

Mitchell and Tyrone Marshall Jr. both scored 24 points for the Trojans.

The task does not get any easier in games two and three of the season Friday and Saturday when Region IX's top two team from last year come to the Peter and Dolores Graff Event's Center. Friday's game with Eastern Wyoming will be at about 7:30 p.m. (following the women's game) and Saturday's contest with Laramie County Community College starts at about 4 p.m. following the women's game.

"We've got to find ways to get better by the weekend because Eastern and Laramie County are going to be tough, that's number one and two in the north last year," Brandl said. "It's obviously a different year but you know there are going to be tough and then you come back right away at Colby (Monday), so we need to come out with better attention to detail than what we did tonight."

For more photos from tonight's game please visit the MCC Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/MPCCMcCook