New-look MCC basketball opens season Friday

The new-look McCook Community College men’s basketball team opens the season on the road in Wyoming this weekend with new coach Dillon Hargrove. The Indians’ home-opener will be Tuesday in the Peter and Dolores Graff Events Center.

MCC travels to Wyoming Friday and Saturday for games Laramie County in Cheyenne and Eastern Wyoming in Torrington before opening at home Tuesday against No. 19 Garden City Community College. That game is one of just five home contests on the pre-holiday schedule. It’s part of a season-opening women’s and men’s doubleheader with the MCC women hosting North Platte at 5:30 and the men taking on the Broncbusters at approximately 7:30 p.m.

Hargrove is coming off a Division II national championship at National Park College (Hot Springs, Ark.) where the Nighthawks went 31-1 on the way to that program’s first national title. In his three years at NPC his teams went 82-27. Those teams also won Region II regular season championships the past two years. Earlier this year, Hargrove received the NJCAA Division II Men’s Basketball Championship Coach of the Tournament, the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Two-Year College Coach of the Year and also the NJCAA Region II Coach of the Year.

But that was last year.

 

Since being hired in late June Hargrove’s task at MCC was replacing nine sophomores from MCC’s 2023-2024 squad, a team that went 11-21.

The rebuild began in late June-early July and started with the hiring of National Park Assistant Coach Drake Henderson from Arkansas.

At that time only two MCC players had committed to returning: sophomores Sacha Boizette (Gatineau Quebec) and Luke Justice (Laurel, Md.). Boizette had limited minutes in 11 games last season from a guard-forward spot. Justice did not play last season for MCC.

“So we really had a full roster to fill and wanted to make sure that we had some type of culture coming back and we brought two players with us from National Park who were accustomed to the culture there,” said Hargrove.

Those transfers included Madison Peaster (Little Rock, Ark.), 6-2 guard, who played limited minutes in nine games as a freshman and 7-2 center Tavarius Vinson (Chicago, Ill.), who did not see the court in his time at National Park College.

“To have Madison and Tavarius come in to really lay down and reinforce the culture and know how we operate and having those two guys along really helped us mesh pretty quickly,” said Hargrove.

After that Hargrove and Henderson still had to lay a lot of groundwork around those first four and wanted a mixture of older guys with experience who wanted to transfer as well as signing solid freshmen. They also needed to move quickly.

 

Transferring in from the guard spots are: Dave Olaniyi (Newark, N.J.) who played in 29 games for Seward County last year, averaging 7.8 points and 2.2 assists per game. Norris Bourne Jr. (Beaumont, Texas) is a guard/forward sophomore transfer from Arkansas-Cossatot where he averaged 14.1 points and 1.8 rebounds in 2022-2023.

At the forward spots, Meek Ater, 6-8, (Yirol, South Sudan) started 28 games for the Spartans at Elgin Community College (Illinois) where he averaged 12.9 points and 7.3 rebounds per game. Matet Dhieu 6-9 (Yirol, South Sudan) comes to MCC from Northern Oklahoma Tonkawa where he played in 27 games last season, averaging 5.3 points and 3.4 boards per game. However Dhieu sustained a shin injury and may redshirt this season to preserve another year of eligibility.

In the post Marial Diper (Rumbek, South Sudan), is a 7-0 transfer after a semester at Edward Waters in Jacksonville, Fla.

“I feel like we got a good group of transfers that were mature and would come in and do the right things as well as freshmen with the right mindset and I feel we did that,” said Hargrove.

Incoming freshman guards include: Nate Coley (Little Rock, Ark.); Vladimir Brkovic (Uzice, Serbia) and Jason Robinson (Waterbury, Conn.). New forwards include Alier Alier (Bor, South Sudan) and Da'Shawn Hall-Johnson (Bridgeport, Conn.).

All the summer recruiting produced a roster with eight sophomores and six freshmen.

 

Late in the summer, another former MCC player, Louie Tucker, who had committed to D1 Stetson University in May after his freshman year, texted Hargrove to ask about the possibility of returning to McCook for his sophomore season.

“That was a pretty obvious answer for us,” said Hargrove. “Getting him back knowing the region, playing a ton of minutes for McCook last year was huge and so overall that gave us a little culture from several perspectives.”

Tucker, a 6-5 guard from Bristol, United Kingdom, started 32 games as an MCC freshman averaging a team-best 14.3 points and 6.6 rebounds per game. He shot 38.6 percent from the field and made 98 shots beyond the 3-point line in 273 tries (35.9 percent). He had a season-high 27 points with nine 3-pointers in a Dec. 3 game at Laramie County CC. He was named all-Region IX third team as a freshman as well as being picked for the Omaha World-Herald’s All-Midlands Junior College team and to the all-Nebraska Community College Athletic Association team.

“Louie is going to be a key in what we do this year, we expect him to be a big scorer for us,” said Hargrove. “Madison Peaster with some of the experience that he’s had at NPC comes in as a leader and will be very good for us all year long and Tavarius Vinson brings leadership and at 7-2 will have good looks,” said Hargrove.

In fall practices and scrimmages, Hargrove said Coley (a transfer from Arkansas Tech) has come in and impressed the coaches at the guard spot along with Robinson who has defended well in the fall and has demonstrated a knack for wanting to “do things the right way.” Hall-Johnson is a 6-8 transfer with a strong body. At 6-8 Ater has been a physical presence on the inside and Olaniyi, while missing some time on the court this fall, is a guard who was his team’s leading scorer a year ago and brings a different look and a quickness and ability to get to the rim that the coaches like to see.

Hargrove said he’s happy with the team’s depth and expects a lot of production throughout the roster.

“I’m excited about it,” said Hargrove, citing his team’s solid scrimmage Sunday against the University of Nebraska-Kearney.

 

After Tuesday’s Garden City game, MCC’s pre-holiday home schedule includes a Nov. 21 game against the Hastings College JV, a Nov. 26 Nebraska Conference game with Central Community College, then Dec. 6-7 games against Laramie County and Eastern Wyoming.

“It’s a really tough schedule starting with traditionally tough Laramie County and Eastern Wyoming,” said Hargrove.

In addition to facing the 19^th ranked Broncbusters in the home-opener Tuesday, the Indians will travel to Garden City a week later for a rematch. In addition to playing a strong Dodge City team on the road they begin the third week of the season at River Grove, Ill. against No. 4 Triton College.

“If you factor in the region games, I think our strength of schedule will probably be up there as one of the toughest but it’s a good thing to prepare us for tournament play,” said Hargrove. “We’ll be tested really early and we’re on the road a ton early, so we’ll see what we’ve got pretty early.”

Following the holiday break MCC will play only conference and region games starting with an NCCAC game Jan. 11 at Columbus against Central Community College then Region IX south games on the road against Otero College and Trinidad State Jan. 17-18 before returning to the Peter and Dolores Graff Events Center Jan. 21, 26 and 28 against Lamar, Southeast Community College and Western Nebraska.

The annual rivalry game with North Platte is Feb. 25 and will mark the return of former MCC Coach Jacob Brandl, who led the Indian program for four years before taking the job at his alma Mater this past spring. Brandl’s MCC teams were 47-72.

“I think this group is going to be one of those groups that’s going to continue to get better throughout the year the more we play with each other,”

said Hargrove.