Kastrup leads T-Birds into opener at North Platte

With a new coaching staff and revamped roster, there's a renewed optimism with the 2021-22 Cloud County Community College men's basketball team ahead of Monday night's season-opening game at North Platte (Neb.) Community College.
Despite being tasked with a 24-game Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference schedule as part of a 30-game regular-season slate, first-year head coach Devin Kastrup will look to rely on a roster that has eight players with at least one year at the collegiate level as part of an 18-man roster.
Included in the list of eight players with collegiate experience is returners Malang Athian, Travis Beetch, and Savian Edwards as all three appeared in at least 19 games a year ago for CCCC.
Edwards would be named honorable-mention All-KJCCC East Division following a year that saw the Topeka native average 11.4 points and 2.7 assists per contest while reaching double-figures in nine of  the 21 contests that he played in.
Transfers such as Nate Duckworth (Bloomington, Ill.), Uros Stepanovic (Belgrade, Serbia), and Joe Kearney (Oakdale, Minn.) will also look to play impact for the T-Birds alongside a group of 10 first-year freshmen.
Kearney is one of three transfers from Southwestern Iowa Community College (Duckworth, Kearney, and Justin Graham) who have played under Kastrup with the three combining for 74 starts with the Spartans while averaging over 22 minutes per contest.
A new-look KJCCC Division I conference will feature 13 teams and all teams playing in one division for the first time since 2017-18 as each conference team will play a double round-robin schedule against the remaining conference schools.
Adding to the intrigue within the Jayhawk Conference this season is that eight of the 13 schools will have new head coaches patrolling the sidelines compared to a year ago, with only Butler, Coffeyville, Colby, Dodge City, and Pratt having the same head coach as last year.
After CCCC's season-opening game at North Platte, the T-Birds will kick off a four-game home-stand on Wednesday, November 3 when the Friends University junior varsity team comes to Arley Bryant Gymnasium, as five of Cloud County's six non-conference games will be played at home.
The KJCCC opener will take place on November 17 with a road trip to Northwest Kansas Tech before the T-Birds turn around to host Hutchinson on November 20 in their KJCCC home opener.
Eight of the 24 KJCCC games on the schedule will take place prior to the holiday break with action concluding on December 13 and then going on hiatus until January 5 when Cloud County hosts Coffeyville for an 8 p.m. matchup against the NJCAA defending national champions.
Of the 16 games to take place in the months of January and February for CCCC, seven will be at home as part of a 15-15 split to the 30 game regular season for home and road contests.
The 2022 NJCAA Region VI Tournament will feature the top 12-teams in the KJCCC as the teams who finish in the top four of the standings will receive a first-round bye.
Teams seeded fifth through eighth will host a first-round playoff game against the remaining four teams to qualify on February 28 with the quarterfinal match-ups taking place at the home sites of the top-four seeds two days later on March 2. This year's semifinals and finals will be played at the Tony's Pizza Events Center in Salina with the Region VI Champion earning the region's automatic berth into the 2022 NJCAA Division I Basketball Championship Tournament.