EMCC Lions ready for crucial regular-season stretch run
The EMCC Lions are looking to their remaining pair of crucial regular-season contests to decide their postseason tournament fate. On the heels of Monday’s hard-fought home loss to Itawamba, EMCC is set to close out the regular season with a Thursday (Feb. 26) trip to Coahoma followed by Monday’s (March 2) home matchup with Northeast Mississippi.
SCOOBA -- The EMCC Lions are looking to their remaining pair of crucial regular-season contests to decide their postseason tournament fate. On the heels of Monday's hard-fought home loss to Itawamba, EMCC is set to close out the regular season with a Thursday (Feb. 26) trip to Coahoma followed by Monday's (March 2) home matchup with Northeast Mississippi.
Currently sitting in 12th place in the MACCC men's hoops standings with a 4-8 conference mark, head coach Billy Begley's 14-14 EMCC Lions battled MACCC champion Itawamba the entire 40 minutes before dropping Monday's hard-fought 64-46 home decision to the nationally 25th-ranked Indians. Within the men's standings, EMCC currently sits just one game behind Northwest Mississippi, Hinds and Northeast Mississippi, who are all tied for ninth place heading into the final two games of the regular season.
The upcoming NJCAA Region 23 Basketball Tournaments will consist of 12-team fields, which will each comprise of the top 11 men's and women's teams from the Mississippi Association of Community Colleges Conference (MACCC) and the men's and women's team champions from the Louisiana Community Colleges Athletic Conference (LCCAC). The top eight MACCC teams and Louisiana champion automatically qualify for tournament play.
Both region tournaments will consist of four rounds played in single-elimination formats. With the top four teams from the men's and women's final regular-season MACCC basketball standings all receiving opening-round byes, the first two rounds of this year's tournaments will be played on the campus sites of the higher seeds on Thursday (March 5) and Saturday (March 7). The separate week-long tournaments are then set to conclude with men's semifinals (March 10) and finals (March 12) as well as the women's semifinals (March 11) and finals (March 13). The semifinal-round games will be hosted by the highest remaining seed in the respective tournaments.
This past Monday, the home-standing Lions challenged front-running Itawamba from the opening tip-off to the final buzzer before falling to the Indians in Scooba. After trailing 25-19 at the intermission, EMCC overcame a 15-point, second-half deficit (38-23) with a 9-0 run midway through the second stanza.
Later in the closing half, a three-point play by EMCC freshman point guard Maurice Henderson cut ICC's lead to seven points (43-36) with six minutes remaining in the contest. Shortly thereafter, the visiting Indians scored 11 unanswered points to move ahead by 19 points (57-38) and essentially lock down their 12th consecutive win on the year.
The Lions were led by freshman guard Jace O'Neal's game-high 15 points versus Itawamba. Henderson followed with 12 points off the EMCC bench.
The ICC men had three double-digit scorers in Damarion Winston (14), DJ Davis (12) and Tim Holliday (10).