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DOUGLAS — For the 11th consecutive year, the Cochise College men’s basketball team has reached the NJCAA Region I Playoffs, though this time around, the Apaches feel they’ve backed in somewhat.
Losers of their last two regular season games, the Apaches held on to the third seed for the Division I playoffs which gives them a home game tonight at 7:30 p.m. against fourth-seed Mesa Community College, winners of its last nine.
The teams split the regular season meetings with the home team winning both. Mesa won the most recent meeting last Tuesday as part of their eight-game winning streak to close the regular season.
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“We’re limping in,” Cochise head coach Jerry Carrillo said. “I don’t think we had a great defensive effort Friday and we had 10 assists to 23 turnovers, so that’s not real great offense.”
The Thunderbirds’ attack starts with athletic 6-foot-7 power forward Gabe Freeman who averages 17 points and nine rebounds a game.
“I think he’s the best player in our league,” Carrillo said of Freeman, a sophomore from McClintock High School in Tempe. “He’s just so athletic and extremely gifted. He dominated our game over there. He had 17 points, 17 rebounds, seven blocked shots and he altered about seven more.”
Carrillo said his team’s success depends not so much on curtailing Freeman’s big numbers, but in shutting down his teammates. In the 83-74 loss at Mesa last week, Mesa guards J.J. Pena and Adam McCoy hit 10-of-14 from three-point range.
In an 87-68 win at home over Mesa earlier in the season, Pena was held to one basket.
“We just can’t let (Freeman) dominate,” Carrillo said. “We’ve got to wear him down, make him guard. In the last game, we let him rest too much on defense... We’ve gotta defend the arc.”
For sixth-year Mesa head coach Alton Lister, the focus is on taking the Runnin’ out of the Runnin’ Apaches.
“We understand about Cochise,” Lister said. “They’re going to play a certain style no matter what. They’re going to try to control the tempo and make you play fast, make you play out of control... We have to go inside-out. We do have size.”
In last year’s playoffs, Cochise defeated Mesa by eight.
A much stronger, sophomore-loaded Cochise team that climbed to as high as third in the national poll, had a difficult time putting away a mostly freshman Thunderbird team.
“That game was never really in doubt but we never really stretched it,” Carrillo said.
Lister said that strong showing last season, coupled with his team’s strong finish to the regular season, has his team supremely confident.
“We won nine games straight, that in itself has really prepared us,” Lister said.
The winner of tonight’s game moves on to play No. 2 seed Arizona Western College in Yuma Thursday night.
The winner of that game visits No. 1 seed Eastern Arizona College, which got a bye all the way to the championship game in the new ladder-bracket format, Saturday night for the right to visit Arizona in the national tournament in Kansas.
Had Cochise beaten Yavapai Friday night in the regular season finale, Western would have won the No. 1 seed.
Admission is usually free to Cochise games, but tonight there will be a $5 admission fee per NJCAA requirements.
Freeman was named to the All-ACCAC First Team along with Player of the Year Kenny Dawkins of Arizona Western, Marcus Palmer of Eastern Arizona, Tom Whitehead of Yavapai, Ira Brown of Phoenix and Zarko Comagic of Central Arizona. Dynile Forbes was the only Cochise player on the second team along with Adam McCoy of Mesa, Justin Ashbaugh of Scottsdale, Mark Sanchez of Pima, Jordan Jamestown of Eastern Arizona and Vitor Zoppa of Arizona Western.
Alex White of Cochise led the third-team All-ACCAC along with teammate and fellow sophomore Frank Borden, Brian Sykora of Scottsdale, Gabor Boros and Vladimir Bulut of Eastern Arizona, Ryan Holmes of Phoenix, Matt Gonzales of Arizona Western, Crayton Jones of Pima and David Cuen of South Mountain.
Tim Parmenter of Eastern Arizona was named Coach of the Year and Tom Whitehead of Yavapai was Freshman of the Year in the conference.
Sports Editor Matt Hickman can be reached at 515-4612, or by e-mail at sports@svherald.com.
