Lady Indians top Hastings JV 64-40

The McCook Community College women concluded their six-game season-opening homestand Tuesday with a 64-40 win over the Hastings College JV.

The Lady Indians came out with a 16-8 advantage after the first period, led at the half 38-19, and 50-25 at the end of three quarters.

“We had a better start to the game than last Friday,” said MCC Coach Brandon Pritchett referring to a 65-51 loss in their last game against the Concordia JV team. “We had better practices leading up to this game, we were more focused and took better care of the ball.”

MCC had a season low 11 turnovers and outrebounded the Broncos 57-33.

“We created more turnovers than we had – 17 to 11 – and we didn’t allow our opponent to get offensive rebounds like we did Friday,” said Pritchett.

The Lady Indians shot just 34.3 percent from the field, made five of 19 from the arc (26.3) and made 13 of 20 free throws (65 percent).

“We need to shoot the ball better because we’re going to be playing some teams coming up that are really tough, so we’ll need to knock down some shots,” said Pritchett. “I thought we rushed our shots at times tonight we just need to settle down.”

The Broncos were held to 18.5 percent shooting while making seven of 29 3-pointers (24.1 percent) and making 13 of 18 shots from the free-throw line (72.2 percent).

“Overall I thought we came in and competed, we had better intensity and energy and we needed to use this game as an opportunity to get better and I thought we did that,” said Pritchett.

Sophomore Madara Liepniece (Riga, Latvia) led MCC on the scoreboard with 16 points to go along with six rebounds while freshman Laia Izquierdo Altimira (Barcelona, Spain) added 12 points and seven rebounds.

Freshman post Peyton Cox (Wauneta) did not suit up Tuesday because of an injury.

“I thought Miriam (Wahlqvist) played well at the five spot having just getting thrown into that spot in the last day and a half,” said Pritchett. Wahlqvist, freshman from Helsingborg, Sweden had eight points and seven rebounds.

Three MCC players each had seven rebounds and two more had six. Natalie Harmata (redshirt sophomore, Sydney, Australia) had six points, six boards and a team-high five steals while and freshman Brylyn Springer (Cambridge) had seven rebounds to go along with five points. Freshman Carolina Garcia Perdomo (Islas Canarias, Spain) scored seven points.

MCC concludes the homestand at 3-3. The Lady Indians go to Hobbs, N.M. this weekend for matchups with a pair of Top 25 teams in the New Mexico Junior College Classic. On Friday MCC plays the hosts Thunderbirds, 7-0 and ranked No. 3 in the country at 7 p.m. then face No.25 Snow College (7-0) Saturday at 1 p.m.

“It should be a good trip and an opportunity to bond as a team and come out and compete,” said Pritchett. “We had some injuries we were dealing with and like tonight we’re going to have to have some other players step up.

The squad will return to the Peter and Dolores Graff Events Center Tuesday for their final home game of the semester against Central Community College at 5:30 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