MCC men win home-opener 99-74

The McCook Community College opened the home schedule Friday in a big way with a 99-74 win over Eastern Wyoming. MCC never trailed and once led 73-35.

“A great effort from us. Our biggest thing is that when you play McCook you’re going to get a team that’s going to compete and fight for 40 minutes and I thought we did a good job of that.”

MCC jumped out to a 13-2 lead in the first 3:23 of the game before the Lancers cut the gap to 14-13 near the 12:00 minute mark.

“We made some subs and they called a time out and went on an 11-1 run but our guys got back into it and really competed,” Brandl said. “I’m really proud of them.”

Sophomore Trey Summers (Greeley, Colo.) came out of the time out with a 3-pointer that sparked another hot streak for the Indians. His fourth 3-pointer of the first half at the 8:05 mark put MCC up 30-17 and the Indians kept applying the offensive pressure to take a 50-26 halftime lead.

MCC’s lead went to 36 points, 73-35, at the 15:42 mark of the second half and the bench took over as all 15 players on the roster played and 14 of them scored.

“Every one of our guys played and gave us something. Everybody was locked in,” Brandl said. “We got a lot of good minutes out of guys.”

Summers led the way with 22 points on a nine-of-10 shooting night which included making all four of this 3-point attempts. Freshman guard Louie Tucker (Bristol, England) scored 17 points, he was four-for-eight from distance.

Sophomore Noah Boyed (Monchy, St. Lucia) scored 11 points and led the team with six rebounds in his 13 minutes of play. Sophomore Thabo Manyere (Auckland, New Zealand) saw his first action at MCC with five points and five offensive rebounds.

MCC shot 50 percent from the field in the first half, 52 percent in the second half and made 13 of 30 shots from the 3-point line. At the line MCC made 10 of 14 shots (71.4 percent). The Indians held a 45-38 rebound edge and turned the ball over 16 times.

Eastern Wyoming shot 38.6 percent from the game, 14.3 percent on 14 3-point shots and 18 of 28 at line (64.3 percent). The Lancers turned the ball over 14 times.

“Defensively, I thought we did a lot of things right, other than the fouls,” Brandl said. “But holding them to 38 percent from the field and 14 percent from 3 is really good.”

MCC goes to 1-1 and will host Laramie County Saturday at 4 p.m. The Golden Eagles won their first game Friday at North Platte 74-72.

“We’ve got a lot of stuff going on with a very talented Laramie County team coming in tomorrow,” Brandl said. “Our guys have got to be locked in, hungry and we have to stay focused and continue to play basketball the right way.”