Mike Ingram thought his Lansing Community College men’s basketball team was prepared for the national tournament. Monday, they showed him they were.
The Stars held first-half leads as large as 19 points and put away Arkansas State Mid-South with several timely plays down the stretch by freshman Shannon Henderson on their way to a 96-88 win in their opening game at the NJCAA Division II Championships in Danville, Illinois.
The 17th-seeded Stars (25-7) now take on No. 1-seed Des Moines Area (31-1) at 11 a.m. (ET) on Tuesday in Danville.
LCC advanced out of the first round in the 20-team bracket by getting a huge game from the 6-foot-8 Henderson. Henderson, from Stockbridge, had two buckets, two rebounds and a blocked shot in a sequence that helped the Stars turn a narrow 82-78 lead with 3 minutes remaining into an 86-78 margin with 91 seconds left. He had a similar sequence earlier in the half as 16-seed Arkansas State Mid-South was pushing to take the lead.
“He made three incredible plays today,” Ingram said of Henderson, who had 10 rebounds and three blocked shots to go with his 18 points. “We missed a shot when it was a (four)-point game. He goes up, gets the rebound and puts it in and then goes down and blocks a shot, and then comes right back down and tips the ball in — and just out of nowhere. And we needed all those plays. I was just really happy for him.”
Sophomore Zander Woodruff led the Stars with 28 points, Ben Smith had 13, and DeAire Lee tallied 12 points and 12 rebounds for LCC, which is playing in its first NJCAA national tournament in a decade.
MORE: See the NJCAA Division II national championships bracket
Ingram told his team ahead of time that they were ready for this, having played three games in short succession a couple times this season, including early on against three ranked teams.
“We’re built to play a tournament,” Ingram said. “We’re a good team. We play hard and practice hard.
“It looked like we were going to run away with it (today). And then that team started playing well. But when you get here, you’re playing good teams. And so we expected it. Fortunately, we made some plays and we’re making our free throws down the stretch.”
The LCC women’s basketball team opens NJCAA Division II national tournament play at 6 p.m. Tuesday against Parkland in Hickory, North Carolina.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on X @Graham_Couch and BlueSky @GrahamCouch.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Lansing Community College men’s basketball wins opener at NJCAA national championships, faces top seed next
Reporting by Graham Couch, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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