R-T Photo/Seth Herrold
With Marty Jackson (21) watching, Rayonte Childs scores on a fast break layup during North Central’s 2019 Central Plains District championship win over Arkansas Mid-South last year at the Ketcham Community Center. Jackson, Childs and the Pirates will face Mid-South in the district championship game again this year, meeting this time at Mid-South’s gym in West Memphis, AR.
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For the second year in a row, the NJCAA Division II Central Plains District championship game will be decided between the North Central Missouri College Pirates and the Arkansas State University Mid-South Greyhounds. The two teams will meet this Saturday with a trip to the national tournament again on the line after North Central repeated as the Region 16 champion and Mid-South once again laid claim to the Region 2 title.
North Central picked up a 73-67 victory last year in Trenton to advance to the national tournament for the first time in program history. With the district site alternating between the Region 16 and Region 2 champions each year, the Pirates this time around will face Mid-South on the road in West Memphis, AR. The game will be played on Saturday at Glen F. Fenter Athletic Complex with a 2 p.m. scheduled tipoff.
“We are certainly excited to go down there,” North Central coach Jeremy Esry said. “They had to come up here last year and we gave them a really tough environment to play in and a tough game. We are pretty much expecting the same from them.”
North Central laid claim to its second-straight region title with a 74-64 victory over St. Louis last Saturday. The second region championship in school history moved the Pirates to 26-3 overall on the season. NCMC is ranked sixth in the nation in the NJCAA Division II poll.
Mid-South, meanwhile, scored the fifth region title in school history and fourth straight with a 104-83 win over North Arkansas on Tuesday. The Greyhounds enter their matchup with North Central sporting a 25-7 overall record and Mid-South is ranked 17th in the same poll that has the Pirates at No. 6.
The Greyhounds have leaned heavily on two players this season. Jalen Lynn, who scored 24 points in the region title game victory over North Arkansas, is leading Mid-South with 20.1 points per game. Ike Moore, who led Mid-South with 29 against North Ark, is averaging 16.8 points per game.
“Jalen Lynn had 25 on us last year as a freshman, so he is probably feeling pretty confident going into our game,” Esry said. “He is lightning quick, gets to the rim and shoots it pretty good from three, so we have got to stay in front of him. He is really similar to the guards we played at Iowa Western and they gave us some issues, so we’ve got to stay in front of him.
“Then Ike does a little bit of everything. He shoots it really well from three. He is shooting (41.1) percent from three, but he can also get to the rim and dunk on you. So those are certainly the two guys that we have to key on (and) have to stop. Then the other guys around them we have to stop them as well.”
Zach Byrd and Christian White are the bigs for Mid-South, averaging 8.4 and 6.7 rebounds per game respectively.
Mid-South shot the ball at a 54.3 percent clip from the field in their region championship win, a stark contrast to what the Greyhounds were able to do in Trenton last year. Mid-South connected on just 31.4 percent of its shots against North Central in that meeting and went just 5-for-32 from three-point land in that loss.
North Central will look to hamper Mid-South’s shooting ability again this time around and the game will likely hinge on how successful the Pirates are at doing just that.
