EMMIE BOESE
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — They've won on their home court often, but a first round national tournament win for the Blue Dragon's men's basketball team this year was special. Hutch beat USC Salkehatchie 96-82 on Monday afternoon.
"That's the thing about being in Hutch," Head Coach Tommy Desalme saud. "I mean you still gotta qualify. Its not like they give us a host spot. You know these guys earn their spot in this tournament and that may be harder to do than anybody else that earns a spot.
Last season, Hutch did not qualify for the national tournament. Sophomore guard Kernan Bundy said a tournament win solidifies why he and his teammates come to HutchCC to play.
"We come here to play here and we come here to play in March," Bundy said. "I think that's kind of our whole goal and has been our whole goal this whole season."
Hutch led 50-43 at halftime. Desalme said he thought his team struggled at the start of the game but recovered on defense.
"Russ (Russell Branch) and Kobe (Smith) I thought really helped us there and really settled us down defensively," Desalme said. "They got after the ball. We just needed something easy out of our defense."
In total, the Blue Dragons scored 33 points off of turnovers and recorded 13 steals.
"That's what we are built on but this team is a little different," Desalme said. "But when we are good we are forcing turnovers and scoring because we need to get easy points out of our defense and I think that settles us down and we've been better since the Barton game in practice. We've been better defensively and that's the only way we can survive is dictating the ball. I mean that's where it all starts for us. When we are not guarding the ball, we are bad and there's still streaks out there where we didn't guard it well and we just let the guy go get something easy but when we are hooked up off the court and make everything hard on the other team and take them out of what they want to do, that's when we are at our best."
Bundy and sophomore Kamryn Thomas led Hutch in scoring with 20 points each. Bundy also recorded three steals.
"We are going to have to lock in on (defensive) tendencies and just keep going," Bundy said.
The No. 11 Blue Dragons will play No. 6 seed Chipola tomorrow night at 7:15 p.m. Desalme said his team will need to put a full 4o minutes together of intense play to beat Chipola. He said starting to make a run in the second half like the Blue Dragons did at the Region VI championship game against Barton is not enough.
"I'm hoping that we learn from that Barton night because it took us so long to get going," Desalme said.
Glen Grunwald and Dan Naccarato will have the game play-by-play tomorrow night on Country 102.9 FM and KWBW 1450 AM/98.5 FM.