The Western Nebraska Community College men's basketball team put four players in double figures and used a late first-half run to run past Casper College 85-73 Monday night at Cougar Palace.
The win was the Cougars 10th of the season and it was a totally different team from Saturday afternoon when they fell to Air Force Prep.
WNCC head coach Billy Engel said that late run in the first half was the momentum his team needed to get the win.
"After going back and forth with the lead changing a handful of times in the first half and once we got up to a six to eight point lead, they made some plays, but we ended the first half on a big run," Engel said. "We had two big runs in the first half that we were really happy about and once the second half hit, we came out running."
The Cougars trailed in the first half27-24 but then went on a 10-0 run behind a big 3-pointer from Biko Johnson to push the lead to 34-27. Casper cut the deficit to 39-33, but the Cougars closed out the first half on a 6-0 run to take a 45-33 lead into halftime.
The second half saw the Cougars widen the lead and never really was challenged. While the team did a lot of running the first part of the second half, they then went down to a slower tempo in the last six minutes of the game, working the offense for easy shots.
Engel said the second half was a different style for the team.
"We slowed it down there at the end when Casper was getting desperate and time was running out," he said. "They (Casper) wanted to play really fast and we just wanted to burn some of the clock and hold onto our lead. You just want to trust your guys to play multiple ways and playing fast, playing slow, playing man, playing zone. You have to have a lot of trust in the guys to go win basketball games for us."
WNCC pushed the lead to 52-35 on five points from Agwa Nywesh, including an old-fashioned 3-point play. WNCC kept putting together strings of two buckets and led 68-44 after a three of four 3-pointers, including two from Biko Johnson and one from Carter Brown.
WNCC led 75-55 when Casper cut the lead to 13, 75-62. But that was as close as they would get as WNCC pushed the lead back to 18, 80-62 on a Chancelor Johnson 3-pointer and won 85-73.
WNCC shot 52 percent from the field and 44 percent from beyond the arc, including burying 10 3-pointers. Biko Johnson, Chancelor Johnson, and Nywesh all had three treys.
WNCC was just 9 of 10 from the charity stripe while Casper was 20 of 30.
Nywesh led the Cougars in scoring with 26 points. Nywesh also had six rebounds, four assists, and seven steals.
Also hitting double digits was Biko Johnson with 20 points including five rebounds and four assists. Chancelor Johnson and Them Koang each had 11 points.
WNCC, 10-4, will be back in action Friday when they open South Sub-region play in hosting McCook Community College in a women's and men's doubleheader. Action Friday begins at 5:30 p.m. for the women's contest and 7:30 p.m. for the men's game.
Casper 33 40 – 73
WNCC 45 40 – 85
WNCC
Carter Brown 3, Rodney Sawyer 8, Biko Johnson 20, Carl Thorpe 6, Agwa Nywesh 26, Chancelor Johnson 11, Them Koang 11.
CASPER
Jaren Harris 15, Dwayne Walker 5, Darius Mason-Robertson 6, PJ Ngambi 8, Gus Wright 6, Rashaun Agee 9, Dalton Peterson 9, Ousmane Dia 5, Keon Baker 6, Bright Iheanachor 4.