News

By Ryan Schlehuber, MCC sportswriter 

This coming weekend is one the Montcalm Community College Centurions men’s basketball team has circled on the calendar as it prepares to play back-to-back games at home this Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 29-30. 

On Saturday, the Centurions (4-2 overall) will look to avenge an 81-77 loss to the Owens Community College Express (2-7 overall), which MCC suffered earlier this month on the road. The Express are currently on a seven-game losing streak. Game time is 7 p.m. 

The Centurions will then return to their home gymnasium the next day to face Macomb Community College (2-3 overall), which is a member of the MCCAA Eastern Conference and currently ranked No. 11 in NJCAA Division II. Game time Sunday is 1 p.m. 

“This is a busy weekend for us, especially with the holiday, it’s tough,” MCC Assistant Coach Asher Vissman said. “The players get 36 hours off, which is more than they normally get, so the emphasis for this weekend is going to be focusing.” 

Vissman said the team is already motivated to earn a win against Owens, having lost to the Express already this year as well as last year, so it will be all about putting in the work and playing on system. 

“We’re very capable of winning both games,” Vissman said. “We’re putting a big emphasis on the fact that if we do what we know we can do and play to a level of our expectations, we know we can have a very good chance to win both games.” 

Centurions sophomore guard Taylen Carver (Louisville, Ky.), who is the team’s returning scoring leader, believes it’s all about finishing the job when his team is leading a game. 

“To get more wins we need to learn how to keep our foot on a team’s neck when we are up,” he said. “We cannot let off the gas and let teams back into the game off silly mistakes and turnovers. We are two minutes away from being 6-0 because of two games we let slip away from us. Once we learn to not let up, we are going to be an even harder team to beat.” 

Carver and Vissman underlined the importance of getting off to a good start against both Owens and Macomb. Vissman said that it’s a problem that creeps up now and then for MCC, and was the case in the Centurions’ last game, a close 82-79 win against Lake Michigan College. 

“That’s been an issue for us, not getting off to a good, fast start,” Vissman said. “We struggled knocking down threes and at halftime, the big word was ‘urgency,’ and in the second half we turned the corner. Something clicked and we started hitting shots and got a good run. But that’s something we expected to do from the start.” 

Carver said he and his teammates need to learn to be more mentally sound come game time. 

“We have lost two games because of silly mistakes when we could have been undefeated right now,” he said. “But we are still learning as a team. The most important area to improve for us to win games is inside our heads.” 

Carver has been the team’s leading scorer the past three games, scoring 21 points against Jackson College. Freshman teammate James Browning (Fort Wayne, Ind.) earned his second double-digit rebounding game, collecting 11, which followed an impressive 19-rebound game in MCC’s loss to Lake Michigan, Nov. 15.  

Vissman said Browning has been a huge element to the Centurions’ game plan. 

“He’s been a huge surprise, for one thing. He’s absolutely a big-time player,” Vissman said. “He really pushes us in practice. He’s a relentless pursuer of the basketball. When he sees the ball, he goes after it as hard as he can. It’s been nice coaching that because you can’t teach it.” 

The weekend’s theme for the back-to-back games is Adopt-A-Family Night.