- Bears seeking to defend the national title they won in 2021
- Jadan Graves leads the Bears with a 16.8 scoring average
- Goanar Biliew and Noah Parcher averaging 12.3 and 12.2 points respectively
The DMACC men's basketball team will face Parkland College (PC) in the opening round of the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Division II Men's Basketball Championship March 15 at Danville, Ill.
The Bears, the defending national champion, are the tournament's No. 4 seed and PC is seeded 13. DMACC takes a 25-7 record into the game and PC is 20-7.
DMACC head coach Brett Putz said he is pleased with his team's seeding.
"With seven losses we can't complain about our seed and who we play," Putz said. "(Parkland College) is a really good program and a really good team. It's one of those things that everybody (in the national tournament) is a good team."
DMACC is led by Covid-19 sophomore (CoSO) Jadan Graves of Syracuse, N.Y. Graves, who capped the season by being named the Iowa Community College Athletic Conference (ICCAC) Player of the Year, led the conference in scoring this season with a 16.8 average. He finished third in NJCAA Division II in three-point shooting at 48.3 percent and his 97 three-pointers were the seventh most in the country. Graves set a new school record for three-pointers in a game with nine against Marshalltown Community College (MCC) on Jan. 18.
Two other DMACC players, Covid-19 freshman (CoFR) Goanar Biliew of Denison and CoSO Noah Parcher of LaCrosse, Wis., also averaged in double figures at 12.3 and 12.2 points a game respectively.
PC is led by Josh Rivers, who is averaging 15.1 points a game. Savon Wykle is at 13.4 points a game and Kieon Gill and Sean Ealy are at 10.5 and 10.3 respectively. Both teams are averaging just more than 80 points a game and DMACC has a slight advantage defensively, allowing 67.7 points a game to PC's 72.5.
"They always play hard, play structured and play the right way," Putz said of the Cobras. "They like to do some different ball screens, get the ball into the post so they are kind of similar to us. I like it because it is things we are familiar with."
DMACC comes into the game with an entirely new starting lineup from the team that won the championship a year ago. Putz said there are some things his players will have to get accustomed to, adding that playing in the Region XI championship game against Kirkwood Community College (KCC) was similar to what the Bears will face in the national tournament.
"They have adjusted quickly and well and have been really focused and locked in with things," Putz said. "Being us is good enough. We don't ask them and aren't going to ask them to do anything that we don't ask them to do every single day. That's been our thing all second semester and it has shown."
Putz said his team has played well the entire second semester. The Bears are 15-2 since the first of the year, put together a 12-game winning streak late in the season and won 14 of their last 15 games.
"They've done a really good job and hopefully we can kind of keep things rolling," Putz said.
DMACC defeated KCC in the Region XI championship game, 84-66, on March 3 and Putz said his team has used the time off to clean up some things that should make the team better.
"We've been able to practice cleaning those things up and hopefully that will translate well when we get to Danville.
The DMACC-PC winner will face either fifth-seeded Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) OR 12TH-seeded Scottsdale Community College (SCC) in the quarterfinals March 17. The tournament continues through March 19 when the tournament championship will be decided.