The second semester is the most important part of the season with seeding for the Region IX tournaments at stake. Wednesday evening, the Cougars will open up sub-regional play as they will face
“This is really all you work for. It is the time you play sub-region games to give yourself an opportunity for a good seed and hopefully playing well the last three or four weeks,” WNCC first-year coach Brian Joyce said. “It is similar to what it has always been. It doesn’t change from semester to semester; it is just hoping that we can be a little bit more consistent in terms of what we do. We now have some games under our belt and you would like to think the freshmen would start playing like older players playing the college game.”
WNCC and McCook enter the East Sub-region contest with identical records at 9-7. McCook already played twice since Jan. 1, falling to
“They play really hard and it is critical in situations like this with us playing hard and them playing hard, and seeing who is in the position to outplay the other team,” he said. “I think they have scrappy players. They have some good guys and have done really well. It will be important for us to match their intensity.”
Joyce said that his players are ready to start the second season. The team has been going through one- and two-day practices since returning Jan. 3.
“The guys have come back real focused. We have had some great practices,” he said. “The guys understand more of what we expect. I think we have much better focus as to our practice and a lot more ownership of guys taking on responsibility of leading this team.”
The WNCC men, who are coming off a heartbreaking 71-70 loss to
Individually, freshman Jamie Eisinger is turning heads as he is tied with the nations leaders in free throw shooting at 100 percent. Eisinger has made 12 of 12 charity stripes.
Unlike the Cougar men who are in their second year in the East Sub-region, the Cougar women will be facing new opponents in sub-region play this year. Previously, the Cougars have been in the Central Sub-Region facing
Last spring the region did some realigning and shifted the sub-regions around. The Cougar women were moved to the East Sub-region and will now battle McCook and Northeast (
Assistant coach Jennifer Pedersen said it won’t be easy by no means in sub-region play and that includes beginning tonight against McCook as they begin their quest to get back to the national tournament.
“We already played them once this year and they gave us a hard time down at Lamar,” Pedersen said. “They really slow the pace of the game down, which really hurt us. They held the ball in one end and obviously we are a running team and that hurt us.
"I think the second half of the season is very important for us this year because we are a pretty young team coming in with 10 freshmen and a lot of our sophomores didn’t get quality playing time last year. The first semester was a time for the team to get together and see how everybody plays. Hopefully we come out this semester and be a lot more competitive and play better together. It is important we come out well in the very first weekend because a lot of the teams in Region IX are hunting for us and have better records then we do.”
The Cougar women enter the second semester with a 13-3 record, which isn’t too shabby considering that the women have been struggling offensively. Still, as much as the team struggled scoring points, they have shined in 3-point shooting ranking among the nations elite. The team is ranked sixth in the nation, shooting 41.72 percent from beyond the arc (63 of 151).
“The reason we are up there in the 3-point category is because we have shot a lot less 3-pointers then we have in the past,” Pedersen said. “In the past we actually draw up plays or give kids the green light to shoot 3-pointers and this year we have been working the ball in to get closer shots because we don’t have the shooters we had in the past.”
One of the main reasons the Cougar women have an eye-popping 13-3 mark is because of their defense. Just like in year’s past, the team is still among the nations elite. Coming into the McCook contest, the Cougar women are eighth in the nation in defense average giving up 50.9 points a game.
Three other Region IX teams are also ranked in the top 20 defensively –
WNCC will face
Pedersen said the women are ready bring the regional title back to
"They are all excited to get started again,” Pedersen said. “They all practiced pretty hard the first day they came back, I think right now they are a little sore because we have been hitting the running and other things pretty hard. But I think they are ready to get going in the game pace.”
After Wednesday’s home contest, the Cougar women will be on the road Friday and Saturday taking on
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