by Alan Hoskins, KCKCC
Kansas City Kansas Community College’s Lady Blue Devils put an exclamation mark on their 11-1 start Friday night, validating it with a 73-57 win over North Arkansas.
The win avenged the Blue Devils’ only loss of the season and snapped a four-game winning streak for the Lady Pioneers, who suffered only their second setback in 10 games this season. The Blue Devils, however, had little time to celebrate, swinging right back into action Saturday with a home contest with Marshalltown Community College.
“The North Ark game was circled on our calendar as soon as we lost at their place so I’m very happy for our girls to work as hard as they did and taste victory while avenging our only loss,” KCKCC coach Joe McKinstry said.
Despite sub-par shooting, the Blue Devils put together their best effort of the season against the best team they’ve faced this season. Led by three hard-rebounding forwards, the Blue Devils overcame 36.5 percent shooting from the field (well under their 46.5 percentage for the season) with a fierce domination of the boards.
What shots the Blue Devils missed, the trio of 5-9 Kisi Young, 6-0 Nija Collier and 6-1 Lillie Moore were there to rebound, combining for 20 offensive rebounds and 33 in total as KCKCC won the rebounding battle by a whopping 55-33 margin.
Young had a double-double with 20 points and 14 rebounds (eight offensive) while the other two just missed, Moore with 12 points and 8 rebounds and Collier with 10 points and 9 rebounds.
“Our forwards did a great job around the basketball. We won’t have many nights where we miss that many open shots,” McKinstry said.
All but five of the rest of the KCKCC scoring came from outside sharpshooters Camryn Swanson and Miya Ford. Swanson had four 3-pointers in a 14-point effort while Ford had a trio of treys for nine points.
KCKCC led virtually from start to finish and built a 39-30 lead at the half but it took a big finish by Young and timely shooting by Swanson and Ford to hold off the Pioneers.
North Ark closed to 43-42 in the third quarter before two 3-pointers by Swanson and one by Ford rebuilt the lead to 54-46. North Ark again closed to 57-53 but Young shut that rally off, scoring 12 of the next 14 Blue Devil points to open KCKCC’s biggest lead.
“Not our prettiest game as far as shooting the ball but a great example of what playing defense, taking care of the basketball and rebounding can do for a team that is struggling to make shots,” said McKinstry, whose Blue Devils also had a season low 12 turnovers. “Although our assist numbers don’t show it, I thought our ball movement was very good and opened up a lot of opportunities for us to get offensive rebounds because their defense was stretches.”
