SLCC basketball: Crazed Bruins reach NJCAA semis

HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Well into the second half of Wednesday's NJCAA tournament quarterfinal, Salt Lake Community College's bench loudly encouraged the five hustling Bruins on the court to take a charge, to keep their hands up and to get a stop.

If you couldn't see the Sports Arena scoreboard — which wouldn't have been a bad thing for Southeastern Illinois College fans — you'd never have guessed at the time SLCC was up 30-plus points by the players' intensity.

But that's just how the defensive-crazed Bruins are. It's also why their championship dreams are still alive.

Sparked by yet another energetic effort on defense — and a sweet shooting night by Brian Green — SLCC became the first team to earn a spot in the NJCAA tournament Final Four with an impressive 74-45 win.

"Intensity-wise as a team I think it's as perfect as you can get. I think pretty well everybody brought it," said SLCC coach Norm Parrish. "When we play defense that usually energizes us."

The energized Bruins will next face Three Rivers Community College (29-6) on Friday at 5 p.m., with a spot in Saturday's championship game up for grabs.

Parrish can only hope SLCC duplicates this eye-opening performance in the semis.

Like they have many times this season, while limiting foes to under 57 points an outing, the fourth-ranked Bruins (31-3) flustered the Falcons (28-7) all night, holding them to an unthinkable 25.5-percent shooting (13-for-51) and keeping them 38 points under their scoring average.

SLCC charged into the locker room with a 41-20 lead after only allowing SE Illinois one field goal in the final 9:47 of the first half. The Bruins didn't relent after the break, either. They held the Falcons to just one more bucket for almost the first seven minutes of the second half and used a 36-5 spurt to blow this one open.

"The kids came out great. I thought we set the tone pretty early defensively," Parrish said. "This team's a little weird — when we play really good 'D' usually our offense follows."

The physical and pesky Bruins' top-ranked defense carved a huge path for the offense. Green led the way, firing in 23 points in less than 23 minutes of action, including a 5-for-7 effort behind the 3-point line.