By Jack Walker
The Grand Rapids Community College men’s basketball team entered Saturday’s matchup against Kirtland Community College on a five-game losing streak, but were able to overcome their slump, steamrolling KCC 116-59, en route to their largest win and the team’s first conference win of the season.
After missing five of their first six shots of the game, GRCC’s offense quickly caught fire. It’s not a stretch to say the first half of Saturday’s game was the best basketball the team has played all season. With 7:31 left in the first half, the Raiders held a 31-22 lead, going into halftime GRCC led 62-27, a 31-5 run. It was pure dominance from the Raiders. By point differential standards, this was the biggest margin in a half the Raiders had all season.
Overall the Raiders shot 25-46 (54.3%) from the field and 7-16 (43.8%) from three. Besides the Raiders’ hot shooting, taking care of the ball was a big part of their huge lead. GRCC had a staggering 17 assists to four turnovers and allowed zero points off of their turnovers. On the defensive side of the ball, GRCC forced an unbelievable 16 first-half turnovers, in which they scored 21 points off of those turnovers.
No individual player in the first half had an eye-popping stat line but it was purely great team basketball that was leading the Raiders to their dominant first half. Sophomore guard Darrell Belcher added 11 points and seven rebounds, including a monstrous chase-down block at the end of the half that garnered many “oohs and aahs” from the crowd.
Belcher said after the game, “It was just a hustle play. It felt good to get the block though, it’s always good.” The block was business as usual for the sophomore forward.
Freshman Logan Dunbar made an early impact hitting three 3-pointers to flood open the scoring for the Raiders. Sophomore Joe Francis returned to the lineup after missing the team’s last game, and his impact was felt, scoring nine points in just four minutes of play.
GRCC did not take their foot off the gas after halftime but started to press down even harder, opening the second half on a 21-8 run by the time KCC took their first timeout.
It was more of the same as the second half played out.GRCC was too much to handle for KCC. The Raiders were able to score 54 second-half points, marking the first time this season GRCC scored at least 50 points in both the first and second half and the third time the team reached the 100-point mark.
Coming off a season-high of 21 points, Belcher was able to score 16 points in 17 minutes of action,
“Coach Fox has just been stressing to me to have fun, and that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing,” Belcher said.
Meanwhile, Francis finished with 19 points in just 10 minutes of run, almost two full points a minute. Freshman guard Mason Wilcox was a spark plug off the bench for the Raiders, scoring 14 points off the bench, including a perfect 4-4 from three, for his most points since the second game of the season.
Head coach Joe Fox said he was pleased with how the team played after the game, “We had a couple really good practices since Wednesday which helped us refocus,” said Fox. “I thought we did a nice job defensively.”
As they did in the first half, GRCC did a great job playing clean basketball in the second half, turning the ball over only four times each half. Fox was impressed with the team’s ball movement.
“As simply as I could put it, it’s the best we’ve passed the ball all year,” Fox said. “We didn’t make bad passes, we made constructive passes to open people, and that’s what we need to do.”
There was no doubt this was a must-win type of game for GRCC to get out of their slump. It’s a good building block for the team, but Fox is already looking on to the next game.
“Every win is a great win, even if we won by two I would’ve been happy,” Fox said. “We have another big one coming Wednesday at home, so we just have to make sure we’re ready for that one,too.”
The big one Fox was referring to is GRCC’s next game against Delta College. Tip-off is at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 31 at the Ford Fieldhouse.
