Rangers drop TJC, Victoria; Lady Rangers home today

Apr. 3—EDITOR'S NOTE — The Kilgore College-Victoria game originally scheduled for Saturday, April 3, was moved up to Friday, April 2, and the News Herald did not realize there had been a change. In the print edition of this story, it's mentioned that the Rangers are on the road today at Victoria, when in fact that game has already happened. Here's the game story. The News Herald regrets the error, and is happy to set the record straight.

Straight up: if Kilgore College goes into the Region XIV Conference tournament playing like this, they're going to be awfully difficult to beat.

The Rangers went to Floyd Wagstaff Gymnasium on the Tyler Junior College campus on Wednesday night, and took care of business, leaving with a 67-62 win, and then finished the regular season with a 98-62 win over Victoria here at Masters Gymnasium on campus on Friday. Coach Brian Hoberecht and the Rangers have won six straight games.

KC is actually in second place in the conference standings by a half-game over Navarro. The Rangers are 15-5 at this writing Saturday morning, and Navarro is 14-5, preparing to host Jacksonville College in its season finale today. Trinity Valley (18-1) leads the conference.

The conference tournament begins Tuesday at Jacksonville College, with the men's first-round games. After the conference seeding is complete, the News Herald will announce the first-round pairings on kilgorenewsherald.com. That could be Sunday, or as late as Monday.

The Lady Rangers were off Wednesday night, after beating non-conference opponent the 903 Elite on Monday. KC's ladies are 9-12 overall, 6-9 in conference play, and sixth in the standings — the women's tournament, which is also at Jacksonville College and begins next week, takes only the top eight teams, so one team will be left out. It looks like at this point that'll be Bossier Parish, who has only one conference win all season.

The Lady Rangers have one regular season game left: a home game here today at Masters Gym against Paris, a 2 p.m. start.

Back to the Rangers. At TJC on Wednesday night, Dantwan Grimes and K.J. Jenkins each scored 13 points for the Rangers. Stephan Morris scored 12, Paul Otieno had nine, Da'Sean Nelson and Malik Grant each scored seven, Duane Posey had three, Godwin Illumoka had two, and Tysen Banks had one.

Otieno's defense was on point: he blocked four shots, had six rebounds, and a steal, and also had two assists.

Nelson and Grimes each had five rebounds; Jenkins, Grant, Javonne Lowrey, Posey and Morris each had three; Banks had five assists; Grimes had four; and Jenkins had three.

KC's bench came up big in the game, scoring 25 points. Tyler's bench scored just 11.

Mason Matthews and Jestin Porter each had 13 points for TJC.

In the win over Victoria College on Friday, the Rangers got 15 points and five rebounds from K.J. Jenkins, 10 points each from Stephan Morris and Godwin Illumoka (Morris had two blocked shots, two assists and four rebounds, as well), nine points from Da'Sean Nelson, who also had three rebounds; eight each from Paul Otieno and Duane Posey — Posey grabbed six rebounds, Otieno, four; six points from Jasiah Wright; five from Tysen Banks, who also had seven assists; and three each from Justin Crawford and Malik Grant; Crawford had two assists.

KC hit 37 of the 66 shots it took (56 percent) and knocked down 16 of its 18 free throw attempts.

Miles Macadory led Victoria with 17 points; Tariq Aman had 15, and Jordan Wallace chipped in 12.