Bob Lutz: Tabor men and women running through the KCAC

I think I’ve discovered my all-time favorite statistic in college basketball.

It belongs to Jurnee Reed, a junior forward and leading scorer for Tabor College in Hillsboro, and it strikes me mainly because the Bluejays are so darn good — 18-0 in the KCAC with a couple of road games remaining and 22-6 overall.

Yet Reed averages only 9.6 points. The Tabor women are undefeated in KCAC play and don’t have a double-digit scorer.

How can you not love that?

The Bluejays do have 11 players averaging at least 12.5 minutes, though, and have won all but two of their conference games by double digits.

By the way, the Tabor men are also 18-0 in the KCAC and both teams are trying to make it to the NAIA Division II national tournament for the third year in a row. The men have had a bunch of close conference games, winning twice in overtime and by 6, 4, 7, 1, 2, 4, 3 and 2 points in other games.

The Bluejays’ men average 84 points and, like the women’s team, have a lot of depth. Although unlike the women’s team, the Tabor men have three players who average in double figures, led by junior Lance Carter’s 17.9.

“What we’re going to try to do is push the basketball as fast as humanely possible without turning the ball over and look to score fast on every single possession,” said Tabor men’s coach Micah Ratzlaff, who grew up in Hillsboro and led his high school to the 1998 Class 3A championship. “We have as much ammunition as I’ve ever had on the offensive end.”

The Tabor men have lost in the first round of the NAIA Division II tournament the past two years and are 25-3 this season. The Bluejays have a tough game Thursday night at Southwestern after beating the Moundbuilders 66-63 on Jan. 9.

The women have clear sailing to an unbeaten KCAC mark.

“The two teams here have kind of mirrored one another over the last three seasons,” Tabor women’s coach Shawn Reed said. “It’s been a lot of fun. Plus, our football team is really good and our baseball team is ranked really high. These are exciting times at Tabor.”

Reed, in his fifth year at Tabor, previously coached at Sterling in the KCAC.

“One year at Sterling we had a really good team and went 31-2 and got to the Elite Eight,” Reed said. “The year before, we made it to the Final Four. We’re the only KCAC team to ever do that but we also had two players who averaged 18-19 points and another who averaged 16. This year’s team at Tabor is a little bit different in that we have a lot of interchangeable pieces.”

The Bluejays’ women have 11 players who averaged from 3.6 to 9.6 points per game. It’s remarkable, really.

“Kayla Wilgers usually plays something like 12 or 13 minutes a game for us, but she had 26 for us in one game,” Reed said. “The next night she might score four or six. But we have a group that doesn’t worry about numbers like that. They’re really unselfish and probably the greatest thing for me as a coach is that they trust each other and trust to me to make the right decisions.”

Reed, who is from Sterling, was an assistant to Kansas State Sports Hall of Fame coach Lonnie Kruse for four years before leaving the profession to teach sports management at Sterling for five years.

“We went from zero majors to 72, which is pretty big for a small college,” Reed said.

But when Tabor was looking for a women’s basketball coach, Reed was interested. The Bluejays were going through some tough times and his first Tabor team was 7-21. But the Bluejays improved to 20-10 and have won 20 or more in four straight seasons.

Of Tabor’s six non-conference losses, four have been to ranked teams and one was to Williams Woods, an NAIA Division I team.

“We always play a very difficult non-conference schedule and hardly any of it is at home,” Reed said. “We struggle a little bit, but we learn a lot about ourselves.”

Ratzlaff, Tabor’s men’s coach, is a fan.

“(Shawn) just keeps bringing it off the bench and there’s absolutely no letdown,” Ratzlaff said. “It’s really hard for that team to be off because there’s so much depth. And whether they’re shooting the ball well or not, he teaches them to really, really guard.”

Tabor’s men have more firepower, led by a hometown kid who has grown into a man. Ratzlaff, in his mid-30s, has been the Bluejays’ coach for nine years.

“I was having a conversation with my dad and one of our assistants and we were wondering if there’s anything close to both a men’s and women’s team from the same place going undefeated in the conference and getting to nationals like we have,” Ratzlaff said.

Hard to fathom. Even harder to fathom a women’s team without a double-digit scorer having this kind of success.

This story was originally published February 17, 2016 at 4:02 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Tabor men and women running through the KCAC."