Lady Indians edge North Platte to open season

The McCook Community College women’s basketball team opened the regular season Tuesday with a 57-56 win over North Platte Community College.

Neither team was able build much of a lead as the game was tied 10 times with nine lead changes. MCC led 14-10 at the end of the first quarter and took their largest lead of the game in the second quarter going up by eight points with 6:06 left in the half but North Platte came back to trail by just 24-20 at intermission.

In the third quarter the Knights responded with a 17-10 third quarter advantage to lead 37-34 heading into the fourth quarter.

The game was tied at 46-46 with 4:26 left in the game when sophomore Madara Liepniece (Riga, Latvia) hit a pair of free throws on consecutive trips down the court to go up 50-46. A 3-pointer by freshman Laia Izquierdo Altimira (Barcelona, Spain) with 2:21 remaining gave the Lady Indians a 55-48 cushion. The Knights kept pressing and cut the lead to 55-53 with 41 seconds remaining but a lay-in with 14.5 seconds left by freshman Johanna Gerlach (Hachborn, Germany) put MCC up 57-53. North Platte hit a 3-pointer with 4.5 seconds left but MCC was able to run out the clock.

“It’s always nice to get that first win right out of the way – it’s a tough game with a lot of emotions with this being North Platte and they have a really good team and play really well on both ends of the court,” said MCC Coach Brandon Pritchett.

North Platte, 2-1 had opened the season with a pair of wins over the weekend in the Iowa Lakes Classic in Estherville, Iowa. NPCC beat Iowa Lakes and Marshalltown.

The Knights shot 33.3 percent from the field, made four of 16 shots from the 3-point line (25 percent) and went 12 of 23 from the free-throw line (52.2 percent).

“This was almost a repeat from our game last year with them except we scored a few more points and shot a little better,” said Pritchett. “Neither team shot the ball well. We shot a lot of free throws and that’s where a lot of the points came for both teams.”

MCC shot 32.7 percent from the field, made five of 18 3-pointers, and went 18 of 29 from the line (62.1 percent).

Liepniece led all scorers with 20 points. She was three-for-seven from the 3-point line and made nine of 12 free throws.

“Madara played a good game and did a nice job running our offense but we have to keep her out of foul trouble,” said Pritchett. “Marta Moya Perez did a nice job stepping in with Carolina Garcia Perdomo out tonight with an injury so Marte played some point and did a good job running that position and playing a lot of minutes.”

Natalie Harmata (redshirt sophomore, Sydney, Australia) and Gerlach both scored nine points.

MCC won the rebound battle 40-37 as freshman Peyton Cox (Wauneta) grabbed 12 boards as well as scoring seven points.

The Lady Indians turned the ball over 22 times to 20 for North Platte.

“We just have to do a better job of executing, we got really slow and monotonous and didn’t put pressure on them to get shots and we have a lot of things to fix,” said Pritchett. “But at the end of the day I’m really proud of them for gutting out the win.”

Tuesday’s season-opener in the Peter and Dolores Graff Events Center was the first of six-straight home games for the Lady Indians and the first of four straight Tuesday home games. The homestand continues Friday at 5:30 p.m. against Laramie County Community College (0-1) and again Saturday at 2 p.m. against Eastern Wyoming (0-2). Both those games are women’s games only and are not part of a women’s/men’s doubleheader.

The next three home games are Nov. 12 against Seward County (6 p.m.), Nov. 15 against Concordia JV (6 p.m.) and Nov. 18 against the Hastings JV (6 p.m.).

Up-to-date information about MCC basketball including livestream links, schedule, statistics, rosters, photos and more can be found on the MCC Athletics website, www.mccindians.com