CASPER,
Wyo. -- The Western Nebraska Community College men's basketball team couldn't
stop a late Casper College run in falling to the T-Birds 81-69 in the first
round of the Region IX Tournament in Casper, Wyo., Saturday night.
Casper
advances to play the winner of Sunday's contest between Lamar and Northwest
Wyoming, while the Cougars end their season a 12-19, including dropping their
last four games.
But,
the Cougars competed in the match early on and then in the second half. The big
difference in the contest was turnovers and shooting. WNCC committed 19
turnovers and shot just 38 percent from the field. WNCC was just 28 percent
from the 3-point line (4 of 14).
Casper,
on the other hand, wasn't shooting the lights out either. The Thunderbirds shot
39 percent from the field. The difference was the Thunderbirds 3-point shooting
where they buried 10 treys. Remi Dibo had four of those 3-pointers.
WNCC
did, however, out-rebound the T-Birds 44-32. Cody Johnson and Quante Cooley led
the way with 12 and 11 rebounds respectively. Both players also finished with
double digits scoring. Cooley had 17 points, while Johnson had 12 points.
Charles Ward also pitched in 15 points.
WNCC
started the contest well, jumping out to an 11-3 lead before Casper went on a
16-2 run to take a 19-13 lead. Casper pushed the lead to 25-17. WNCC battled
back slicing the lead to two points on a couple occasions, the last time at
29-27 two Cody Johnson free throws.
Casper
went on to lead 40-30 halftime.
Casper
came out in the second half and built a 48-36 lead before the Couars went on a
21-7 run to take their first lead since early in the first half at 57-55. The
Cougars tied the contest at 55-55 with 10:31 to play on two Chad Calcaterra
free throws. Moments later, Quante Cooley got a steal and put the Cougars up by
two.
Casper
came right back to score the next eight points to go up 63-57. The Cougars were
still in the game, trailing 66-62 before Casper went up 75-60 with 20 minutes
to play.
The
Thunderbirds were led in scoring by Dibo with 24 points followed by Corey
Spence with 18 and Dominique Lee with 15. Ryan Madsen also pitched in 10
points.
In
other action in the first round of the Region IX tournament, Northeastern
Junior College upset the North No. 2 seed Sheridan College 97-81. North Platte
Community College and Otero Junior College had easy wins in their first round
games. North Platte defeated Dawson 71-42 while Otero dropped Miles Community
College 72-40.
Today's
action has Laramie County facing Western Wyoming at 1 p.m., Gillette taking on
Eastern Wyoming at 3 p.m., Central Wyoming facing Trinidad State at 6 p.m., and
Lamar facing Northwest Wyoming at 8 p.m.
WNCC (12-19) 30
39 -- 69
Casper (24-7) 40 41 -- 81
WNCC
Tahir Little 9, Zach Clemens 6, Quante Cooley 17, Rich
Williams 5, Trey Moore 3, Cody Johnson 12, Charles Ward 15, Chad Calcaterra 2.
CASPER
Corey Spence 188, Remi Dibo 24, Dominique Lee 15,
Jonathan Blythers 6, Ryan Madsen 10, Lew Evans 8.
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