The Western Nebraska Community College men's basketball team remained in the driver's see to get the second seed from the South Sub-region with a gutsy 73-67 win over McCook Community College Saturday afternoon at Cougar Palace.

                The win moves the Cougars to 15-12 overall but more importantly to 6-4 in sub-region play, a full game ahead of McCook who drops to 5-5 in conference play.

                WNCC head coach Billy Engel said this team continues to play strong as they control their own destiny in trying to host a first round playoff game March 4.

                "That is all you can ask for is a chance and what a better destiny to control our own destiny for second place," Engel said. "We said early, early in conference play after we dropped an early one, 'guys we still control our own destiny if we win the games we are supposed to win and we protect home court, we will be in second place and host a playoff game.' So it was a great job tonight staying together and coming up with a big one, but the mentality stays the same on Tuesday."          

                McCook started out of the gate strong as the Indians charged to a 10-3 lead and led 11-5 when Engel called a timeout. Whatever was said sparked the Cougars as they went on a 9-0 run to lead 14-11 behind four points from Carl Thorpe and five from Biko Johnson.

                WNCC went up 22-13 on a Stephen Ovia bucket. McCook came back to cut the deficit to 24-19, but the Cougars closed out the first half on a 5-0 run on a bucket by Thorpe and three points from Johnson.

                The start of the second half belonged to McCook as they tied the game at 35-35 and then led 49-43 in the first eight minutes. McCook led 56-47 when the Cougars started their comeback. WNCC shcied the deficit to one, 58-57 on an old-fashioned 3-point play by Johnson with 7:23 to play. WNCC then tied the game at 60-60 on a Johnson 3-pointer and retook the lead with a 10-3 run that saw two free throws by Johnson with 4:42 give the Cougars the lead for good at 64-63.

                WNCC stayed strong as they went up 70-63 and won the game 73-67.

                WNCC shot just 30 percent in the first half and heated up in the second half at 48 percent. WNCC finished the game connecting on 7-of-19 3-pointers and were 14-of-19 from the charity stripe.

                McCook shot 38 percent from the field and were 4-of-29 from the 3-point arc.

                McCook out-rebounded the Cougars 48-46 as 7-0 freshman Noah Boyed tallied 14 rebounds. WNCC was led on the glass by Thorpe with nine.

                WNCC had three in double figures. Johnson led the way with 26 points with just one trey and 9-of-11 from the charity stripe. Also hitting double digits was Zach O'Callaghan with 12 points, all in the second half. Thorpe finished with 10 points.

                WNCC will be back in action next week with two games to wrap up the regular season. On Tuesday, the Cougars will travel to North Platte for a conference game with North Platte Community College before wrapping up the regular season on Saturday at home against Northeastern Junior College with the women beginning at 2 p.m. and the men at 4 p.m.

McCook               19 48 – 67
WNCC                   29 44 – 73
MCCOOK
Martel Evans 19, Madit Lueeth 18, Zeki Cavli 6, Simon Akena 7, Jah-Keish Demby 2, William Humer 3, Noah Boyed 12.
WNCC
Dimitrije Nikolic 4, Biko Johnson 26, Carl Thorpe 10, Stephen Ovia 4, Daniel Bula 7, Enzo Clouvel-Urie 5, Maurice Walker 5, Zach O'Callaghan 12.