Lynx Win Semi-final Over Parkland 86-74

Lincoln College men’s basketball coach BJ McCullum has been fortunate to have plenty of weapons at his disposal over the course of his team’s thirty-two game season.

In Saturday’s Region XXIV semi-final win over Parkland College, the coach got the chance to use them all.

Four Lynx reached double figures, and three more came within one basket of the benchmark in the 86-74 victory. The win inserts the Lynx (27-5) into tonight’s Region XXIV championship game against Danville Area Community College, held at Laughlin Center on the campus of Lincoln Christian College. The winner will earn a spot in the NJCAA Division II National Tournament. Tip-off is set for 7 p.m.

For McCullum, his team’s offensive balance was just a matter of cause and effect.

“The biggest thing we did offensively today was, we went inside first,” said the coach. “We really attacked the front of the rim early in the game, and that’s what got us the lead…once we got all that traffic in the lane and got all those baskets, they had to try to take that away from us, and then David (Pickering) was able to knock down some jump shots.”

The Lynx ability to score in seemingly every way set up a “pick your poison” type dilemma for the Cobras (18-14) and coach Chris Warren.

After watching the Lynx front court trio of Brandon Alexander, Shawn Bridgewater, and Kyle Jacobs dominate the post while combining for all fifteen of the Lynx points in the first seven minutes, Warren switched his team’s man to man defense to a zone in order to protect the basket.

The result was more space on the perimeter for the sharp-shooting of Pickering, who connected on back to back three-pointers in less than a minute to give the Lynx a 21-9 advantage, prompting a Parkland timeout with 11:45 remaining in the first half.

“I thought they handled everything we threw at them very well,” said Warren. “We would change defenses, and they would run the type of action that would work well against it.”

“(Pickering) hit two big threes in a row for us, and that just took their momentum,” said McCullum. “They were hoping to go to the zone and slow us down, and instead we got two quick threes out of it, and then we were able to go right back inside, and it was good for us.”

The Lynx took a 42-28 lead into the locker room at half time.

With the Cobras back in man to man defense, the Lynx reverted back to their strength inside in the second half, with the help of Bridgewater’s 14 second half points.

Bridgewater also provided himself and his teammates with plenty of second chances, with seven of his eight rebounds coming on the offensive end. The sophomore finished with a team high 22 points to lead the Lynx.

“Second opportunities (were the difference),” said Warren. “Bridgewater was a ton on the glass, especially early, and so was Alexander. I just thought they hurt us on the glass, because it seemed like every time we made a push at them, they’d come up with second and third shot opportunities. They just outplayed us.”

Following Bridgewater in the scoring column for the Lynx were Alexander with 14, Pickering and PJ Keaton with 12 points each, Sheldon Evans with 9, Jacobs with 8, and Jake Littrel with 7 points. Alexander lead the Lynx with nine rebounds.

An earlier loss to Parkland stuck in the mind of at least one Lynx as the team prepared for Saturday’s contest.

“We came out here really pumped up to play this team,” said Evans. “By them beating us, it stuck a dagger in our heart, and we remembered that. I think everybody couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about how tough this team was going to be.”

Parkland was lead by Midwest Athletic Conference Player of the Year Matt Neaville with 24 points.

LC is now set to face the Region XXIV tournament’s Cinderella story in Danville Area Community College in tonight’s championship. The Jaguars came into the tournament as the tournament’s No. 7 seed with a record of 14-19. After winning a first round “play-in” game, DACC defeated No. 2 seeded Lincoln Land College on March 2nd in overtime, before defeating No. 3 seeded Lewis & Clark College in overtime on Saturday. Also serving as motivation for DACC is that NJCAA Division II National Tournament is played in Danville.

The Lynx won both of the team’s earlier battles this season, earning a 73-60 victory at Danville on January 4th, and a 79-59 home victory on January 28th.

Evans, a member of the 2004-2005 squad that finished 5th in the National Tournament, hopes to have a large raucous crowd in what amounts to the final home game for the Lynx this season.

“I think I know what to expect, my job is kind of to get all of these young’ns to follow,” said Evans. “We’ve been through this last year, and (the sophomores) are trying to show them that we can get even further than we did last year.”

“First thing’s first: we get a lot of our energy from the crowd. We talk about it at school, and we try to get all the people out here to give us energy, because that keeps us up. We’re just going to keep doing the same things we’ve been doing, get a lot of rest, watch some tapes, and just prepare for what’s next.”

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