MEN’S COLLEGE BASKETBALL: Catawba Valley men prepare for play-in tourney game

Red Hawks (21-8) at home Monday night to face Vance Granville

HobbsDailyReport.com

By CODY DALTON

Special To HobbsDailyReport.com

HICKORY – After one of its most successful seasons in program history, the Catawba Valley Community College (CVCC) men’s basketball team on Monday starts what it hopes will be a run to its first national tournament.

The fifth-seeded Red Hawks (21-8, 13-7 in Region X) face 12th-seeded Vance Granville (5-23, 1-19) in a National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Division II play-in game on Monday at 7 p.m. at CVCC.

Coming on the heels of a five-game winning streak, CVCC head coach Bryan Garmroth likes where his team is at heading into postseason play.

“I think we’ve improved a lot from the beginning,” he said. “We spend a lot of time on fundamentals early. I think we’ve improved, grown together and like each other really well and enjoy playing together.

“It’s been a good season. It certainly could have been a better season, but we’ll take it. I think right now we’re in a position where we’ve got really good chemistry, and I think we’ve got everyone wanting the same goal.”

The Red Hawks will be at full strength on Monday for the first time. They’ve had at least one player hurt or ill in each of their 29 games.

“It’s a challenge because you try to get a rotation and learn your rotations,” Garmroth said. “The players have done a great job. Guys have stepped up when people have been out.

“It’s like we didn’t miss a beat. People have really stepped up. Now that we do have everybody back, hopefully we can stay healthy.

“We need the depth. It’s great to have the depth. The key is going to be how we use the rotation, play everybody and how we’re going to keep the organization of what we’re doing going.

“The biggest thing that helps us there is we have a really, really unselfish team.”

Garmroth believes his team’s absences have helped make it a more well-rounded squad.

“I think any time you’ve got balanced scoring and you don’t have one or two guys you are depending on or one guy averaging 19, 20 or 25 points a game then you’re harder to guard and harder to prepare for,” he said. “We’ve had guys step up.

“We go to Louisburg, and (freshman guard) Cole (Johnson) hits nine 3-pointers. It’s kind of been that way all year where different people have stepped up, made plays and contributed.

“I think we would be a hard team to scout and prepare for because we have good depth and are very balanced.”

Perhaps the biggest return to the court on Monday will be sophomore forward Isayah Johnson, who suffered a foot injury during the late stages of the season.

Garmroth believes Johnson’s presence greatly impacts CVCC’s line up.

“(Johnson’s return) gives us more depth in the post and gives us more flexibility to put someone like (freshman) Jahleer (Black) back out where he can play the perimeter or he can play the post,” Garmroth said. “Depth is huge.

“e’ve just got to be wise in using it and how we’re rotating people. That’s something you try to figure out early and knowing your rotations, but ours have been different every game because of the flu and injuries.

“I think it goes back to having a special team chemistry with a lot of unselfishness.”

Garmroth learned a lot about his CVCC men’s basketball team during its month-long, six-game road trip that begin in late January and finished near the end of February.

“I thought realistically we might win four or five of them, but when you lose the first three games and you come back to win the next three and finish that six-game road trip at .500, I think that shows some toughness and resiliency for these guys,” Garmroth said.

“That led to us winning five in a row. Beating Fayetteville Tech and Patrick Henry to close the season — I went into those games anticipating winning, but I did not anticipate we would control the games as well as we did.

“Those games weren’t really close, and those are two very talented teams.”

To advance, the Red Hawks must beat Vance Granville, which has just five wins.

“Vance Granville can’t be overlooked,” Garmoth said. “They have six talented players. The only thing that has hurt them this year is that they only have six talented players, but those six players are good. They’ve got some guys who can score a lot of points.

“The two games that we’ve played against them, we have not been able to stay in front of some of their guys because of their quickness. They get to the rim, get in the lane and kick the ball out to their good shooters. They are a good team and a well-coached team.”

Garmroth said winning on Monday all starts with his team focusing on itself.

“We’ve got to get better,” he said. “We’ve got to be able to stop their penetration. We’ve got to be on the shooters on the catch. We’ve got to play our style and hope that maybe we can wear them down.

“Vance Granville is coming off its first win in the league so I think that gives them some confidence. If you look, they’ve been in games. They’ve lost to the top teams in our conference in what were close games until the last five or six minutes. You’ve got to be ready for them.”

A win on Monday would give CVCC a tie for the school record for single-season wins (22) and another win would tie the school mark for wins in a season (23).

“I just want to win the next game,” Garmroth said. “At the end of the year, we’ll tally them up and however many (wins) we come out to we come out to. I’m not thinking ahead.

“I’m thinking about Vance Granville and doing what we can do. If that gets us win No. 22 that’s great. Then we’ll go try to win game No. 23.

“If we can tie or break that record, the only thing that means is that we are still winning. I’m not worried about what’s been done in the past. That takes care of itself if we just take care of each game.”

If victorious against the Vanguards, the Red Hawks would face a second-round match up with fourth-seeded Wake Tech — the host school for this year’s Region X men’s basketball tournament — on its own court.

“We just have to keep reminding our players that we don’t play Wake Tech if we don’t beat Vance Granville,” Garmroth said. “It’s not about who we are playing. It’s about us. We’ve looked at the things we’ve done poorly.

“We’ve won 21 games, but we went through 45 minutes of video on things we aren’t doing well fundamentally. We have to focus on ourselves more than we do our opponent.”

• Cody Dalton is sports information director at CVCC.