Your future, our focus
Trapper Men Begin Trek For National Title Wednesday
In the days following the Region IX Men’s Basketball Tournament, Northwest College head coach Brian Erickson showed his team a season highlight reel compiled by the school newspaper’s staff.
“This is closure,” Erickson told his team after viewing the film. “That’s what we’ve done. Now it’s time to win a national championship.”
Erickson is proud of the success his Trappers have had this season, compiling a 30-4 record, capturing the Region IX regular-season crown as well as the region tournament championship, a No. 15 national ranking and the No. 7 seed in the 24-team NJCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship.
But the third-year coach isn’t satisfied heading into the national tournament, which began Monday at the Hutchinson Sports Arena in Hutchinson, Kan., and concludes Saturday.
“We’ve got to be able to mentally move on,” Erickson said Friday before his team left for Kansas by bus Saturday. “So [Thursday] was our day to, mentally, forget about everything we have accomplished, and instead worry about what we’re going to accomplish in the national tournament.”
The Trappers will attempt to accomplish more starting with a second-round matchup at 2 p.m. Wednesday. NWC earned a first-round bye due in part to their region tournament title, and will face the winner of John A. Logan College (27-6, seeded 10th) and Cape Fear Community College (23-8, seeded 23rd) in round two.
Erickson and the Trappers know both teams only by film.
“Every team at this point is going to be good, that’s what we do know,” Erickson said. “We’ve just got to play to the best of our ability and take each game one at a time. And if we continue playing like we have been, we should be in good shape.”
NWC has not lost a game since a Jan. 9 setback to Sheridan College in the Trappers’ Region IX North opener. NWC proceeded to win out, and is now riding a 17- game winning streak.
But the key, Erickson reiterated, is for his guys to put their previous 34 games in the past. That could be a challenge for a group of Trappers who won their first region tournament and earned their first national tournament appearance since 1967.
“We’re still coming back down a little bit,” sophomore guard Colin May said. “I think it has all started to sink in slowly. I think once the season is over, finally, I think it’ll set in fully.”
What May and fellow sophomore EJ Hubbard seem to understand, however, is that their work isn’t finished yet.
“Right now, I don’t think it has hit a lot of us yet,” Hubbard said. “Yeah, we’ve won a lot of games, but we’re not done yet; that was just the beginning.”
If it plans to achieve the best possible ending, NWC likely will need to generate more of what has been one of the best offenses in junior college basketball. The Trappers lead the NJCAA in points (3,335), are fourth in per-game scoring (98.1), fourth in field goals made per game (35.2) eighth in 3-pointers made per game (9.4), seventh in 3-point percentage (41.8) and fourth in free throw percentage (77.2). Their field goal percentage of 49.7 is also impressive, good for 16th nationally.
But numbers are just numbers to the Trappers.
“It doesn’t really mean much if we don’t win,” said sophomore Chris Boucher. “Nobody is going to care about what we did in the past; you’ve got to show up and prove you belong at nationals.”
Those are strong words from Boucher, a 6-10 forward-center from Canada who leads his team with 22.2 points and 11.6 rebounds this season. Boucher has been recruited by dozens of Division I programs since the start of the season, but has made it a point to put his future aside for the sake of chasing a national title.
“That’s what matters to me and my team,” Boucher said. “And my team is what matters most to me, so I want to win the national tournament not just for me, but for them too.
Sophomore guard William Desilien closely trails Boucher with 21 points per contest to go with five assists. Hubbard and sophomore Daryle Morgan score at averages of 11.7 and 10.7, respectively. May, who rounds out the starting five with Boucher, Desilien, Hubbard and Morgan, averages 8.7 per game. Reserves Ammar Rehman, Dan Milota and Tyler Chandler also have done their part, as each averages five points or better from the bench.
“Everybody matters,” Desilien said. “If we’re going to win the national tournament, we’re going to need everybody, not just the five guys who start — everybody.”
Hubbard said a big part of the Trappers’ success this season has been the energy of their home crowd at Cabre Gym. Including three Region IX Tournament games, which were played on NWC’s home floor, Northwest is 15-1 at home this season. Early in the season, when fans started to buy into just how good these Trappers are, a packed Cabre Gym became the norm.
But that will change in Kansas.
“Energy,” Hubbard stated Thursday as the biggest change facing NWC this week. “We won’t have our home crowd with us like we did [in the region tournament]. We have to be prepared for the downs ... the lows in the game ... and the fact that we won’t have our fans there to pick us up.”
Chandler, a redshirt sophomore, knows the Trappers will have each other, however.
“We just have to stay together and play together and keep our heads,” Chandler said. “The way I look at it, we’re going against people just like you and me. And we’ve worked just as hard or harder than anyone else and we’re just going to show up and play basketball.”
Live broadcasts of the games can be viewed free of charge at www. njcaatv.com/menbkbcha