By Jack Walker
The Grand Rapids Community College men’s basketball team opened conference play with a 93-78 loss to Mid Michigan College at the Ford Fieldhouse.
What started as a relatively close game, quickly got out of hand for GRCC. After five minutes of play, the Raiders trailed by four. After the first 10 minutes of play, the Raiders were down by nine. Five minutes later, the Raiders trailed by 19. After 20 minutes of play the Raiders trailed by 26 going into the locker room at halftime.
The score sat at 57-31 during halftime, with Mid Michigan College ahead. Fifty-seven points was the most points allowed by the Raiders in a first half all season, and the fourth time allowing more than 50 points in the first half. The 26-point deficit also marked GRCC’s worst first half by point differential. The two main reasons for GRCC’s large deficit were rebounding and turnovers, a common theme seen all season. GRCC allowed 13 first-half offensive rebounds and had 12 turnovers to MMC’s five. Of Mid Michigan’s 57 points, 36 of them came in the paint.
“I thought we coasted and they played aggressive,” said head coach Joe Fox.
Sophomore guard Spencer Willman spoke on what factored into the first-half woes, “A lot of it had to do with heart, we just don’t take it personal when someone scores on us.”
Willman added, “We just couldn’t get stops, we were letting them run in transition and let them do whatever they wanted.”
The Raiders took noticeably longer to come out of the locker room at halftime than usual, with most players coming back to the court a little under two minutes before the start of the second half. For comparison, MMC’s players returned to the court with around seven minutes before the second half to warm up.
The halftime talk certainly boosted the Raiders’ energy as they were able to outscore MMC 47-36. Not good enough for a win, but a sign that even if the team is down, they will continue to fight and put forth energy for a comeback. GRCC was able to shoot 6-14 from beyond the arc in the second half and forced 11 turnovers. Meanwhile, the Raiders themselves only had eight turnovers.
“First half we were hoping to win, second half we played like we wanted to win,” Fox said, noting the positives to take away from the team’s second-half performance. “There’s always positives. It’s the first conference game so we got a long road. They took second in the conference last year and they’ll be up there again this year, but you gotta be ready to play.”
Freshman guard Jack Agema commented on the second-half resurgence, “We were playing more of our game, pushing the pace and playing solid defense, which we weren’t really doing in the first half.
With the loss to MMC, the Raiders moved to an even 8-8 on the season and 0-1 in conference play. But, GRCC has a chance next week to really turn the season around, as they will play four games between Saturday, Jan. 20 and Saturday, Jan. 27. The first two games of the slate will be on the road, one in Alpena, and one in Escanaba. The team will then wrap up the jam-packed schedule with two games at home.
“We built our preseason schedule crazy busy at the start so that we would be ready for stuff like this,” said coach Fox. “We’ll be ready, we’ll be prepared.”
The team will travel up to Alpena for their next game on Jan. 20 and will have their next home game on Wednesday, Jan. 24 against Muskegon Community College.
