SLCC basketball: Kansas trip excites Salt Lake Community College

When the Salt Lake Community College men's basketball team made its first-ever NJCAA tournament in 1994, the Bruins were pretty much just happy as Dorothy to be back in Kansas.

You might have even thought Silas Mills et al won the national title by how they celebrated after claiming fifth place.

Not this time.

After knocking off third-ranked Southern Idaho to earn their spot in the 16-team tourney, the No. 4-ranked Bruins are in Hutchinson, Kan., with a bigger goal. They want to — and believe they can — return from the Midwest with some national championship hardware.

SLCC begins its quest for the NJCAA trophy today at 9 a.m. MDT against 28-4 Vincennes (Ind.) University.

"We're going (there) to win the national championship. We'll be there for a week; we might as well win it," said SLCC shooting guard Brian Green. "We believe in ourselves. We're going with the mindset, 'Just believe in ourselves and we can win and just play hard every game.'"

Point guard DaVell Jackson, the Scenic West Athletic Conference player of the year, doesn't want to settle for anything less than winning four games back in "Hutch." Teams that lose fall into the consolation bracket.

"We made it this far," Jackson said. "We might as well take the whole thing."

SLCC coach Norm Parrish believes two types of teams generally qualify for the national tournament.

"There's the type that's happy to be there and the type that's there to really try to win it," he said. "So we need to not be just happy to be there if we really want to go for it."

Considering it seemed hard to distinguish if their practices this past week were for football or basketball, these hard-working Bruins opted for the latter. It's that type of intensity — in practices and games — that boosted SLCC to become the nation's stingiest defense and to a 29-3 record.

Parrish believes his players will need to continue to outwork opponents because the Bruins don't stack up athletically with most top-tier teams. They can out-tough teams, but they won't out-talent many.

"Hopefully our guys will compete because we have a chance," Parrish said. "We're good enough to win it and we're bad enough to get beat twice. We can't just show up."

Green is just stoked the tournament is about to begin. He looks forward to playing a "very good" Vincennes squad, and hopefully more.