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SHERIDAN, WYO.-The North Platte Community College mens' basketball won the first regional championship in school history Tuesday, beating Sheridan College 69-65. The Knights (28-4) got out in front early and held a 40-35 lead with strong outside shooting from Brenton Brown and Joe Ragland. But the hosting Generals made up the difference as they went to a 2-3 zone which slowed down NPCC a little. The game went back and forth. With 1:25 left, Ragland buried a three-pointer to give the Knights a 64-63 lead. Then after stopping Sheridan, NPCC got the ball back. Brown missed on a three, but Dorian Williams got the rebound. After a timeout, Brown got a layup off the inbound pass to make it 66-63 with just 29 seconds left. Idris Lasisi missed a game-tying three attempt for Sheridan but Antoine Proctor tipped it in with 17 seconds left, making it a one-point game again. Ragland was fouled and the sophomore from Springfield, Mass. made both shots to put the Knights up at 68-65. Lasisi missed another three and North Platte’s Rundell Mauge got the rebound with just two seconds to go before being fouled. The 7-foot-1 center from the island of Trinidad then hit one of two foul shots to essentially put the game away and send the Knights to the national tournament in Hutchinson, Kan. In the 25th season for Knights Head Coach Kevin O'Connor, the veteran will lead NPCC to its first ever trip to National Junior College Athletic Association Championship Tournament, which begins on March 16 and runs to March 20. O'Connor, a graduate of North Platte St. Patrick High School, played for NPCC during the 1975 and 1976 seasons. Then 10 years later, he took over for Rusty Parker as the coach. In 1994, with a team led by Lemont Daniels and Myron Simms, NPCC made it to the Region IX finals in Sterling, Colo. where it lost 69-68 to Western Nebraska Community College. It took O'Connor and the Knights 15 years to make it back to the championship game of the region tournament and just like the first time, NPCC fell one point short in the 2009 finals, this time to Lamar Community College on last-second basket. But this year, with 11 sophomores back from that team who came close last year, the Knights would not be denied as it ran through Trinidad State Junior College and Northwest College in the first two games, then got to the finals again with a semi-final win over Laramie County Community College. In the finals, not even a strong Sheridan squad on its home court could stop NPCC, who was determined to get to Hutchinson. On March 16 at 6:30 p.m., North Platte Community College will play the College of Eastern Utah in the first round of nationals.
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