Defense falters in MCC men’s loss to Southeast CC

The McCook Community College men had chance to pull out a win late Tuesday but fell to Southeast Community College 88-87.

MCC was up 87-85 and at the free-throw line with 14.6 seconds left in the game, but a missed free throw that led to an easy bucket at the other end of the floor by the Bobcat's Radek Pulsipher, who was fouled and hit his free throw with 3.9 seconds left.

"The story of the second half of the game and the second half of the season is that we just can't guard anybody right now," said MCC Coach Jacob Brandl.

The Indians held a 15-point lead late in the first half but Southeast went on a 6-0 run to cut the halftime deficit to 55-46.

"If we go up double-digits at halftime, it's a different game," said Brandl.

The Indians didn't get much better to start the second half as Southeast pushed past MCC on a 22-6 run over the first seven minutes of the second half.

"Fouls, giving up offensive rebounds, we just weren't very good," said Brandl. "But those types of games happen and credit to our guys they kept battling."

The Bobcats went up 70-62 at the 11:21 mark before MCC whittled into the lead. A 3-pointer by sophomore Ridley Shema (London England) cut the lead to 76-73 with seven minutes remaining. With 58 seconds left sophomore Ty Foster (Bronx, N.Y.) put MCC up 86-84 but the Indians were unable to put the game away at the free-throw line.

"The free-throw line hurt us as well," said Brandon.

MCC entered the game as the 15th best free-throw shooting team in NJCAA at 74.3 percent as a team. On Tuesday the Indians went 16 of 22 (72.7 percent) but after making all eight of their first half shots fell off to eight of 14 in the second half (57.1 percent).

"It's just disappointing that we let one get away from us because we're a better basketball team than that," said Brandl.

The Indians finished the game shooting 39 percent for the game (29.7 percent in the second half), made 10 of 29 from distance (34.5 percent).

Southeast shot 46.4 percent from the field, 27.8 from the 3-point line on five of 18 3-pointers and made 19 of 24 free throws (79.2 percent). The Bobcats won the battle of the boards 45-43.

Brandl noted MCC had eight more shot attempts than Southeast, were only outrebounded by two and got 12 on the offensive end, MCC turned the ball over 10 times and the Bobcats 18.

"Those numbers really add up to what should have been a 15-point win for us," said Brandl. "I thought we played with emotion and with passion but we didn't play very smart."

MCC had five players in double figures led by 17 from freshman Bryan Akanmu (Paris, France). A trio of Indians scored 15 points including Foster, freshman Louie Tucker (Bristol, England) and sophomore Martel Evans (Omaha Creighton Prep). Shema finished with 12.

"Ridley Shema made some big plays for us down the stretch and that was great to see because we need him to be good," said Brandl.

Freshman Jaxson Brandl (Tribune, Kan. / Greeley County HS) scored five and had four rebounds off the bench and sophomore Brandon Kabuya Mpoyi (Paris, France) had seven boards.

"Jaxon Brandl got some rebounds and stuck his head in middle and Brandon gave us some good minutes picked seven rebounds in 11 minutes, so we did a lot of good stuff but we just didn't make the right plays when we needed to," said Brandl.

Southeast was goes to 3-16 and 1-1 in the NCCAC. The Bobcats had six first-semester wins vacated.

The Indians go to 6-11 and 1-2 in the Nebraska Conference.

MCC is back into Region IX south play for the rest of the month with alternating home games. On Saturday the team travels to Lamar then is back in the Peter and Dolores Graff Events Center Tuesday against Northeastern Junior College. The women's game with NJC starts at 5:30 p.m. with the men's game to follow.

"It doesn't get any easier, Lamar plays well at home so we've got to figure some stuff out before Saturday if we want to meet our goals," said Brandl.

The team closes out the month with a Jan. 26 game at Scottsbluff against Western Nebraska and a home game Jan. 30 against North Platte (7:30 p.m.)