The North Central Missouri College basketball teams, both nationally-ranked and #1 seeds in the D-2, Region 16 tournaments, will host the region title games on Saturday afternoon at the Ketcham Community Center in Trenton.
The Lady Pirates, ranked #10 in the country after a harrowing two-point win last Saturday at Metropolitan Community College, get a rematch with the Wolves at 1 o’clock on Saturday (on KGOZ FM 101.7), with pregame at 12:45. Metropolitan advanced to the title game with a Wednesday afternoon win against St. Louis Community College, 52-47. North Central swept the regular season series against MCC and has a record of 15-4 heading into the first weekend of April.
Coach Jeremy Esry’s Pirate men have a final regular season record of 14-6, good for a 12th place ranking nationally, up four positions from last week. In Saturday’s 3:30 title game in Trenton, NCMC will host St. Louis Community College, after the Archers throttled Metropolitan CC on Wednesday night in St. Louis, 94-48. The Pirates swept St. Louis in the regular season, although both games were tough, hard-fought single-digit wins for North Central. The men’s championship game will tip at 3:30 on Saturday afternoon, with coverage on Hot Country Z 101.7.
The interesting aspects to this year’s Region 16 championship games are two-fold, as the event was moved from Jason Gym at Lincoln University in Jefferson City to a “higher seed hosts” format, and, with Region 16 matched up with Illinois’ Region 24 schools in next week’s district tournament (April 9th and 10th), the Region 16 championship games will not be about season survival, as two representatives from Region 16 will combine with six out of Region 24 to create a pair of four-team, single-elimination tournaments next weekend. The TWO teams that win championships out of those brackets will advance to the national tournaments. Those tournaments will be in Danville, Illinois on the men’s side and Port Huron, Michigan for the women.
With this Saturday’s games being a part of the NJCAA postseason, cost of admission will be $7.00, and free for kids ages 10 and under. Admittance will be capped at 25% capacity, or 175 tickets.