CCCC Men Win 2nd Game In McDonald's Classic

SEDALIA, Mo. — A dominant first half propelled the Cloud County Community College Thunderbirds to a second win in as many days.
Coming off of a 74-61 victory over Neosho County Community College on Friday night, the T-Birds got out to a 46-15 halftime lead on their way to knocking off host State Fair Community College in the McDonald’s Classic on Saturday night.
Cloud County improves to 3-0 on the season.
“It was a perfect weekend whatsoever, but it was a good weekend to continue to build on,” Cloud County coach Devin Kastrup said. “We definitely built some confidence. I think our guys walk out of the weekend saying 'okay, I think we have the potential to do something.’ We have just got to continue to get better. So now the challenge is, can we refocus on Monday and ignore that we had a great weekend.”
State Fair, which downed the Central Methodist College junior varsity 84-76 on Friday, was tied with Cloud County at 7-7 in the early going.
The T-Birds then put together a 21-2 run to open up a 28-9 lead on the Roadrunners.
Cloud County, knocking down 16 of 25 field goal attempts for 64 percent in the opening 20 minutes, would extend the lead to 46-16.
“We felt like we came in locked in and prepared and really wanted to kind of take care of business this weekend. We kind of set the goal that we wanted to sweep the weekend,” Kastrup said. “We played hard, turned them over a few times, got going and played with a lot of confidence. The shots were falling and it was absolutely a glimpse of what we could be.”
State Fair (2-1) opened the second half with a 9-3 spurt to make it a 49-25 game.
That is as close as the Roadrunners would get.
Cloud County went on to lead by as many as 35 points, 70-35, on its way to the win.
“At halftime we talked about trying to treat it as if it was a zero to zero game. Our goal was we wanted to win the second half. I felt we had a little bit of a drop off, I felt we stopped pushing it in transition. But we ended up winning the half and we accomplished our goal.”
Nine of the 13 players who saw action in the game for Cloud County scored, including four in double figures.
Sophomore guard Cheikh Sow hit five of nine field goal attempts and 7 of 10 free throws on his way to scoring a game-high 19 points. He also had six rebounds.
Bol Agu, a sophomore forward, scored 14 points. He was four of six from the floor and made all six of his free throws.
Sophomore guard Ja’Ron Briggs Jr. was five of seven from the field and two of two from the line in scoring 13 points and also had seven rebounds.
Emmanuel Manyoun added 11 points. He hit four of five field attempts, including all three of his three-point attempts.
Cloud County shot 50 percent (24 of 48) from the field and 81 percent (21 of 26) from the free throw line.
Thomas Diew and Alex Gunnels scored 11 points each for State Fair.
The Roadrunners were 12 of 52 from the field for 23 percent and 11 of 21 from the line for 52 percent.
Cloud County has a week off before hosting Northeast (Neb.) Community College at 4 p.m. Saturday.