'Hound men scrimmage after opponent cancels

Fort Scott Community College sophomore Dejuan Sherman works his way by freshman Trent Anderson during Monday night's intrasquad scrimmage. (Scott Nuzum/Tribune)

Sometimes, you just have to improvise.

Fort Scott Community College's mens' basketball team had scheduled a scrimmage with another team at Arnold Arena for Monday night, which would have been its first home scrimmage in nine years. But the other team, Next Level from Wichita, called late Sunday night and cancelled due to some sort of "emergency."

So instead of just having another day of practice, FSCC head coach Michael Cook decided to have a formal intrasquad scrimmage open to the public. The officials who would have worked if Next Level had shown worked the intrasquad scrimmage and a small crowd still came to Arnold Arena to watch.

"It served its purpose," Cook said. "It's worth its weight in gold right there to get after somebody and to have some referees. We've kind of had a couple of bad practices and when Next Level cancelled, I thought, 'Well, let's practice.' But it's better any time you have a crowd and referees. They want to better and they get to understand the calls and how the refs are going to call it."

The Greyhounds split into two teams -- with some shuffling during breaks -- and played four 20-minute periods with a constantly running clock. The scrimmage lasted about an hour and a half.

"We saw some good things," Cook said. "We just have to continue to build and get better.

"I love what I saw out of our sophomores. We have seven playing and they played well tonight. We'll find out Thursday against another team, another college, where we stand. Overall, I did like what we saw."

Per juco regulations, statistics were not kept and the scores were unofficial.

Though this scrimmage did not turn out as planned, the Greyhounds will still get plenty of work before their season opener Nov. 2 against the Southwestern College junior varsity at Arnold Arena.

"We'll do three more (scrimmages)," Cook said. "We'll go to Allen Thursday, Coffeyville on (Saturday), which is two days later. Then we'll go to the College Basketball Experience in Kansas City. We'll go against NAIA schools and it will give us a chance to get guys recruited. We'll play three there, three at Coffeyville and two and Allen."