Indians roll to 120-76 home win over York JV

The McCook Community College men rolled to a 120-76 win Monday in the Peter and Dolores Graff Events Center over the York University JV as 13 players scored for the Indians and each played at least 11 minutes.

“This was a good bounce-back win for us at home and we did what we wanted to do,” said MCC Coach Dillon Hargrove. “We wanted to come out with a lot of energy and we did that. We wanted to place emphasis on the defensive end and our starters really took pride in that.”

The Indians scored the first 16 points of the game on the way to a 55-31 first half lead. MCC then outscored the Panthers 65-45 in the second half.

Freshman starter Djibril Diawara, (Aulnay-sous-Bois, France) led all scorers with 18 points. Redshirt freshman Alier Alier, (Bor, South Sudan) led MCC with nine rebounds and scored 12 points while North Platte Community College transfer Mo Diao, (sophomore, Darkar, Senegal) scored nine points.

MCC had a strong bench showing Monday with eight players scoring 76 points and three players reaching double digits.

Freshman Sofiane Benragba, (Montpellier, France) scored 13 first-half points sophomore Vladimir Brkovic (Uzice, Serbia) made three of five triples in the first half to score 12 points and finished with 16. He made six of eight shots from the field.

“I was really proud of our bench guys. Vladimir came in and shot lights out in the first half and so did Sofiane,” said Hargrove.

Freshman Justin Neubert, (Durango, Colo.) scored 14 points including a pair of 3-pointers. And freshman Kaya Mutambirwa, (Geneva, Switzerland) scored eight points had five rebounds and five assists and made two of five 3-pointers.

“Kaya got some pretty good minutes in and filled up the stat sheet for us,” said Hargrove.

McCook High School graduate Kaiden Porter, who spent last year as a student manager for the team, saw his first action of the season and scored eight points in 12:22 including a pair of 3-pointers. Freshman guard Owen Stack (Melbourne, Australia) likewise played in his first game and scored seven points with a pair of triples.

“Kaiden Porter and Owen Stack came in and give us eight and seven points each and I was really happy to see that,” said Hargrove.

MCC made 25 of 35 shots from the field in the second half (71.4 percent) and shot 63 percent for the game. From the 3-point line the Indians made 18 of 35 shots (51.4 percent) as eight player hit at least on 3-pointer. MCC made just 10 of 24 free throws (41.7 percent.) The Indians out-rebounded York 50-36 and had 14 assists in the game.

“We had 50 rebounds, which was something we were looking for, and we shared the ball well tonight,” said Hargrove.

York shot 36.8 percent from the field, 31 percent from distance and made seven of 11 free throws.

The Panthers go to 2-5 on the season.

MCC improves to 5-2 and 3-1 at home. Next up the Indians will host No. 16 Indian Hills Community College (6-1) Friday at 7 p.m. The Warriors were coming off their first loss of the season Saturday in Ephraim, Utah, against No. 5 Snow College, 80-71.

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