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Busters' basketball season comes to close
Published 3/4/2013 in Sports
Busters' season comes to close
By ADAM HOLT
aholt@gctelegram.com
Like in so many other games this season, the Garden City Community College men's basketball team looked for 20 minutes like they might pull off an improbable upset.
And like in so many other games, the Broncbusters crumbled in the second half. This time, it ended their season.
Garden City (11-20) fell on the road to No. 2 Coffeyville, 92-70, in the first round of the Region VI playoffs on Saturday night.
"We came out and gave a good effort and battled," GCCC head coach Rand Chappell said in a phone interview. "We were right there at the half in the game."
It was 35-32 at halftime, with the Red Ravens getting a putback at the buzzer to keep it from being a one-point game. And like so often before, big 3-pointers by the opposition set the Busters back.
Travis Britt hit a pair of threes early in the second half to make it 41-34, and Earl Peterson extended that run with a finish off a GCCC turnover. Coming off a 31-point game to end the regular season, Peterson was big again, and hit a 3-pointer that extended the lead to 52-39 with just about 14 minutes to play.
Rebounding — another consistent weakness for the Busters — ended up hurting, too, as Coffeyville out-rebounded Garden City 41-22, including 21 offensive boards for 22 second-chance points.
Montel James led the Ravens with 21 points, Peterson had 18 points and was 4-of-8 on 3-pointers, and Britt had 14 points and mad 4-of-5 from behind the arc. Eli Alexander and Mike Martin added 11 points each.
Garden City got a team-high 16 points from Jade Cathey, With Reuben King adding 15 and Terry Webb scoring 13. Chris Hall had 11, and Frank Agholor scored nine.
but Garden City's weaknesses in the frontcourt were apparent.
GCCC pulled within 54-49, but Britt and Martin hit threes to open it up to an 11-point lead again. Garden City got within 60-52 off a Webb 3-pointer, but James got a finish and foul to make it a double-digit lead again.
"I thought we played hard and with a lot of emotion, and that helped us stay in the game for a good while," Chappell said. "But at some point, emotion wears off a bit, and it comes down to making plays."
Garden City finishes the season 11-20, and went 3-13 in KJCCC play. Coffeyville (30-1) hosts Butler (24-7) on Tuesday in the quarterfinals.
While disappointing, it should be noted that Chappell wasn't hired until June of 2012, and he and assistant coach Brady Trenkle had little time to put together a team.
"Starting in June, where we really didn't have a team, and had zero returning points, we knew it was going to be an uphill battle," Chappell said. "I think coach Trenkle and myself recruited as hard as we could for six weeks, and we pulled a bunch of guys together that maybe weren't a perfect mix of talent. I thought they played hard for parts of the year, for most all of the year."
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