MCC Women drop home opener to Eastern Wyoming

The McCook Community College women opened their season at home Friday with a 75-70 loss to Eastern Wyoming.

MCC led from the opening tip until 20 seconds left in the first quarter, when the Lancers took a 16-14 first quarter lead.

Eastern Wyoming stretched the lead to 42-29 at the half and held a 26-point lead with 4:40 left in the game before MCC made a furious effort over the final few minutes to close the final margin to five points.

“If we played all game like we did the last five minutes of the fourth quarter we could have blown this game wide open by double-digits in the first half,” said MCC Coach Brandon Pritchett.

MCC had an early six-point lead before the Lancers crept back in the game in the second five minutes of the first quarter.

“We got comfortable when we got up by six early and let them come back and just didn’t play well after that,” said Pritchett. “We had a lot of little things that went wrong, we gave up 14 offensive rebounds, we turned the ball over 17 times and shot nine of 16 from the free throw line in the first half.

MCC finished the game shooting 38.6 percent from the field, made six of 21 3-pointers (28.6 percent). And finished 20 of 28 at the line (71.4 percent).

“We should have drove the ball more, got to the paint, got to the free-throw line,” Pritchett said. “We missed five layups. We change all those little things and this is a completely different ball game.”

Eastern Wyoming shot 37.7 percent from the field and made nine of 30 shots from the 3-point arc. The Lancers outrebounded MCC 39-37 and turned the ball over 14 times.

A trio of sophomores led MCC in scoring. Gemma Gruettner Bacoul (Berlin, Germany) had 19 points. Noa Iglesias Chorda (Barcelona, Spain) put in 13 and Natalie Harmata (Sydney, Australia) scored 12 points.

Sophomore transfer Audra Vine (Thornton, Colo.) chipped in nine points, five assists and five rebounds while sophomore transfer Ebba Zalamans (Stockhom, Sweden) led MCC with nine rebounds and scored seven points.

“I’m happy with how we fought down the stretch but we have to be better against Laramie County,” said Pritchett. “We have to rebound and defend better and execute on offense.”

The Golden Eagles opened the season Friday in North Platte with a 56-52 win.

MCC (0-1) will take on Laramie County (1-0) at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Peter and Dolores Graff Events Center.