North Platte Knights fight off MCC men, 65-62

NORTH PLATTE – The McCook Community College men dropped a 65-62 decision to North Platte Community College Tuesday. A three-point attempt by freshman William Lee to tie the game at the buzzer missed to send the Knights to a win and a season sweep over the Indians.

MCC came back in the eight minutes of the game, being down by seven points, and tied the game at 58-58 with 2:45 to play but the Knights were able to salt away the game with German Plotnikov from the free-throw line. He finished the game making nine of 10 from the line, to contribute to his game-high 23 points.

“I thought our effort was really good tonight,” said MCC Coach Jacob Brandl. “We didn’t lose this game because of effort or heart.”

North Platte took a 38-36 lead at the half and came out with an 7-0 run to start the second half to stretch the lead to nine points but the Indians were able to re-establish momentum defensively.

“And this is the second game in a row where we were really good on the glass,” Brandl said. The final statistics showed MCC winning the board battle 44-42.

Sophomore Rahkiem Petterson (Midland, Texas) led MCC with 18 points on the night. He was seven of 13 from the field and had seven rebounds. Freshman Julian Lual (Calgary, Alberta) grabbed eight boards to go along with 15 points which included a three-for-six night from the 3-point line.

Cortland Blake (sophomore transfer, Fort Worth, Texas) added nine points and had six rebounds, sophomore Marcus Tobin (Ewa Beach, Hawaii) snagged eight boards and scored eight points.

MCC fell off to 27.3 percent shooting in the second half to finish at 32.9 percent for the game, and just six of 31 from the 3-point line (19.4 percent).

“I trust that our offense is going to come back because we have capable guys,” Brandl said. “Right now we are leaning on our defense which isn’t a bad thing, we just need to continue to work better on offense on not settling and knowing the situations.”

The Knights out-scored MCC at the free-throw line 18-8.

“We have to find ways to get to the free-throw line because that is killing us,” Brandl said. “Then when we get there we have start making them.” The Indians were eight of 14 for the game (57.1 percent). North Platte was 18 of 28 (64.3 percent).

The Knights improve to 6-10 and 4-2 in NCCAC. Southeast Community College (3-2) has a chance to tie North Platte with a win at home Saturday against Central Community College (2-3).

MCC falls to 10-8, and finishes the NCCAC schedule at 2-4.

The Indians close out the season with three home Region IX south division games, starting Friday against Trinidad State at 6 p.m., in a game that was moved up because of the cancellation of Friday’s women’s game. On Saturday MCC takes on Otero Junior College (4 p.m.) for Sophomore Day and the regular season concludes March 30 (7:30 p.m.) against Northeastern Junior College.

The Region IX Tournament begins April 3 at selected sites, with first round game sites to be determined by conference standings and seedings.