The Three Rivers College women’s basketball team now knows who its first dance partner will be at the NJCAA Division I women’s basketball national tournament in Casper, Wyoming.
The Lady Raiders are seeded 11th in the 24-team field and will open the tournament a week from Wednesday against 22nd-seeded Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College. Tipoff time for that game will be 12:15 p.m. on March 27. The game will be televised on ESPN+, as will all NJCAA tournament games except for the national championship. That game will air on ESPNU.
“We’re excited to have the automatic bid in there in the 11-seed,” Three Rivers coach Alex Wiggs said. “It’s one of those (things where) you never know where you’re going to fall out. But we’re really excited to go to Casper.”
Mississippi Gulf Coast will take a 23-4 record to Casper as the Bulldogs earned their national tournament bid by winning the Region 23 tournament.
“I don’t know much about them, but I’m really confident in our team’s ability,” TRC freshman Laylah Reese said.
Simaru Fields leads MGCCC in scoring at 14.2 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.7 steals per game, while teammate Tytiana Buckley averages 13.6 points and eight rebounds per contest.
Both Reese and classmate Kaleigh “KT” Thompson are excited to be heading to the national tournament.
“I feel very excited,” Thompson said. “We’ve been waiting all year for this (and) the time has finally come.”
Said Reese: “I’m really excited about it. And (it’s) something that I’ve been planning on doing and looking forward to all season, so it’s great to finally be here.”
One thing which worked in TRC’s favor for tournament seeding was its strength of schedule. Three Rivers played 29 of its 31 games against NJCAA Division I opponents, including splitting a pair of games with second-seeded Wabash Valley and an overtime loss to No. 9 seed Trinity Valley.
“I think it just shows that every game during the season is important,” Wiggs said. “Those two games were big-time games — and I think it should give our girls confidence, splitting with Wabash and losing one in overtime to Trinity Valley. (It) should give them confidence that, ‘Hey, we can go there and we can compete against anybody in the country. We battled this year, we were prepared, and so we should be ready to go.’”
And that is why Wiggs wants to continue playing tough competition down the road.
“We traveled down to Texas, we played Angelina and we played Trinity (Valley),” Wiggs said. “We want to continue that and we want to even even step out further and compete against some of the best teams in the country. And what helps is that our region just continues to get better and better. So we are seeing it, not only in the regular season, but also once region play starts as well.”
If the Lady Raiders beat MGCCC, they will face Shelton State (Alabama) in the round of 16 at Casper. TRC also could theoretically earn a rematch with Wabash Valley in the semifinals and could face Trinity Valley once more if they make it to the national championship game.
“I think all year we’ve been waiting on another chance to play all of them again,” Thompson said. “If we do get to play them again, it’s going to be a battle.”
Mike Buhler - Daily American Republic