Season of firsts continues for Newman in NCAA II tournament
Ryan Mesh is nervous.
Ryan Mesh is nervous.
The biggest fear, for Emporia State women’s basketball coach Jory Collins, is that he won’t do his job. That somehow he won’t help 6-foot-3 sophomore center Merissa Quick maximize her potential.
The Newman men’s basketball team received the program’s first bid to the NCAA Division II Tournament on Sunday.
With all five starters gone from their NJCAA runner-up finish a year ago, the Hutchinson Community College women’s basketball team knew there would be a lot of doubts.
It’s taken the Hutchinson Community College men’s basketball team 16 years, but after a 77-54 win over Barton in Saturday’s Region VI championship game, the wait is over.
The statements came early and often from Hutchinson in Friday’s 85-62 win over No. 2 Coffeyville in the Region VI men’s basketball semifinals.
The amazing thing, really, is that Hutchinson’s Jade Herl had no idea what the score was.
Eastern Oregon beat Southwestern 86-54 Wednesday in the first round of the NAIA Division II women’s tournament in Sioux City, Iowa.
The opportunities that slipped away for the Newman men’s basketball team in the last two weeks were tough to swallow.
It doesn’t need much dressing up, and it’s as big a game as the Region VI men’s basketball tournament ever gets to see.
Friends’s women lost to Roosevelt, Ill., 57-52 on Wednesday in the NAIA opening round of the women’s tournament in in Sioux City, Iowa.
It wasn’t hard to find motivation in the back-to-back losses the Friends women’s basketball team suffered in late December.
Fort Hays State point guard and Northwest product Craig Nicholson was named the MIAA freshman of the year and a second-team All-MIAA selection on Monday after helping lead the Tigers to a share of the MIAA regular-season title.
A turnaround was never out of the question for McPherson College men’s coach Tim Swartzendruber.
Friends went from elation to deflation in two seconds Saturday evening.
Leading Newman 69-68 with just under four minutes left in the second half on Saturday, Arkansas-Fort Smith put the ball in the hands of Jake Toupal, a skinny, 6-foot-3 junior guard out of Broken Arrow, Okla.
Tough defense, a sharp-shooting Trae Beck and Frankie Drayton filling in for Darrell Traylor in his first start propelled the Newman men to an 80-62 win over Texas-Permian Basin on Saturday and kept the Jets tied for first place in the Heartland Conference basketball standings with Arkansas-Fort Smith.
Newman leaped to an early lead and easily beat Oklahoma Panhandle State 74-60 and remained tied for the Heartland Conference lead.
Craig Nicholson’s eyes open, like clockwork, at 6 every morning.
This perfect storm of returning and new talent, of the right attitude and ability, doesn’t come along very often.