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Lions' second-half dominance ends Greyhounds' season
Fort Scott Community College's men got off to a rough start in Tuesday night's Region VI-Division II Tournament semifinal game versus Brown Mackie at Arnold Arena. But they recovered and took the lead at halftime and looked to be getting stronger early in the second half.
But Brown Mackie, the tournament's No. 4 seed, dominated a four-minute stretch of the second half so thoroughly that the Greyhounds were never able to recover.
By game's end the Lions had made the top-seeded Greyhounds a one-and-done team for the second consecutive year by the score of 74-57.
Last season, Fort Scott came out lackluster as the No. 3 seed in a first-round home loss to sixth-seeded Highland. To start this game, the Greyhounds (14-17) came out of the locker room too much of the opposite -- so hyped up that they tried too hard and saw Brown Mackie (18-14) jump out to a 15-8 lad after six minutes.
"We had to calm then down," Fort Scott head coach Michael Cook said. "We got up four (at the half) but the truth is, we should have been down four the way we were playing.
"We started settling for 3's instead of being our normal, aggressive selves. And those things caught up with us."
The 'Hounds eventually got back into the game, tying it at 22-22 with 6:06 to go on Jeremiah Fleming's 3-pointer, then going ahead on Anthony Cerda's transition basket off a Lion turnover.
Sam Smith put Brown Mackie ahead again with a 3-point shot with 3:45 left but Eddie Sims found John Freeman under the basket moments later to put Fort Scott up 27-25.
Kevin Loving tied the score again. Tyler Owens put Fort Scott ahead, 29-27, with 49 seconds left and Cerda took his own steal in for a layup to extend the halftime margin to four points.
Freeman extended the lead to start the second half with a layup but Cook knew that his team didn't come out of the locker room as he wanted despite the fact that they were maintaining their lead, even extending it to 6 points when Sims hit a 3-pointer at the top of the key with 14:44 on the clock to make it 40-34.
"Toward the end of the half, we recovered and we came out --we talked about what to do in the first five minutes -- but the first two shots we shot were 3's instead of attacking the paint."
It was at this point that Brown Mackie's four minutes of dominance began. Christo Majok's transition basket, going coast-to-coast through the Greyhound defense with a defensive rebound, set off an 18-0 run that saw the Lions up 52-40 with 10 minutes to go.
In the next two minutes Fort Scott scored just a pair of free throws. The drought of field goals didn't end until Freeman scored another layup with eight minutes to go.
"I thought we panicked," Cook said of that stretch. "We didn't execute any of our offensive sets or defensive rotations. I thought we were trying to bring the game back to us as individuals. We haven't played that way all year. I think the magnitude of the game made us go to that.
"Brown Mackie made shots. We're not going to take anything away from them. They came in and they made shots. "
Another run late in the game extended Brown Mackie's lead to 20 points, 72-52, with 1:41 to go.
Sims led Fort Scott with 19 points while Dametrius Walker finished with 10. Jeremiah Fleming, the nation's leader in 3-pointers made, made 2 of 3 from the arc but Brown Mackie got wise to that and he never scored again after the six-minute mark of the first half.
Smith finished with 21 points for Brown Mackie with the aid of 5 3-pointers. Majok, Chad Mordecai and Mabor Gabriel each finished with 10.
Fort Scott finished the night 22 of 56 from the field for 39 percent while Brown Mackie went 27 of 52 for 52 percent.
The Greyhounds were once again badly rebounded, 39-22. They had just 9 boards in the second half.
Brown Mackie will go on to play third-seeded Kansas City for the Region VI championship and the berth into the NJCAA Division II National Tournament at 3 p.m. Thursday in Park City. The Blue Devils (21-11) handed second-seeded Johnson County (25-6) its fourth loss in its final five games, 74-67, at Overland Park in the other semifinal. This means that neither of the Jayhawk Conference's Division II co-champions will be in the final.
(4) BROWN MACKIE: Smith 6-11 4-4 21, Loving 2-7 0-0 4, Mordecai 3-6 2-2 10, Jones 3-8 0-0 7, Jones 3-8 0-0 7, Gabriel 4-6 2-2 10, Wenyin 3-5 3-5 9, Majok 5-8 0-0 10, Frager 1-1 0-0 3, Abdelrahim 0-0 0-0 0. TOTALS: 27-52 11-13 74.
(1) FORT SCOTT: Walker 4-14 2-4 10, Sims 7-12 2-5 19, Fleming 2-3 0-0 6, Cerda 3-8 2-2 8, Freeman 3-7 0-0 6, Allen 2-7 0-0 4, Brull 0-0 0-0 0, George 0-1 0-0 0, Owens 1-2 2-2 4, Thompson 0-2 0-0 0. TOTALS: 22-56 8-13 57.
Halftime: Fort Scott 31-27.
Three-point field goals: Brown Mackie 9-23 (Smith 5-10, Mordecai 2-5, Frager 1-1, Jones 1-3, Gabriel 0-1, Wenyin 0-1, Loving 0-2), Fort Scott 5-13 (Sims 3-3, Fleming 2-3, Cerda 0-1, Owens 0-1, Walker 0-5) .
Total fouls: Brown Mackie 13, Fort Scott 12. Fouled out: None. Technical fouls: Brown Mackie bench 2.
Rebounds: Brown Mackie 39 (Smith 7), Fort Scott 22 (Walker 4, Sims 4). Assists: Brown Mackie 15 (Mordecai 6), Fort Scott 9 (Walker 4, Sims 4). Turnovers: Brown Mackie 20, Fort Scott 14. Steals: Brown Mackie 6 (6 with 1 each), Fort Scott 15 (Cerda 6). Blocked shots: Brown Mackie 7 (Wenyin 3), Fort Scott 3 (Walker, Sims, Freeman).