Their Christmas dinners long ago digested and their New Year’s plans well behind them, Lenoir Community College’s basketball players make a long-awaited return to normal life today.
The Lancers play host to Guilford Tech at 3 p.m. in their first game since Dec. 8, a lengthy layoff brought on by the holiday break.
LCC coach Bobby Dawson said the scheduling lull, in part a product of the logistics of making scattered players available, will be a factor as the meat of the season commences.
“It’s going to definitely affect us,” Dawson said. “We’re just trying to get our legs back right now. We’ve got to go back and pretty much start over.”
The Lancers, at 3-3 overall and 0-1 in Region X, were off to a middling start as a unit. They won their first three before entering the break on a three-game skid with losses to top-ranked Louisburg, Alleghany College of Maryland and Hagerstown CC.
Guilford Tech (6-10) has endured no such layoff but has had mixed results.
Freshman forward Josh Hill, a Kinston native, leads the Lancers in scoring with 24.0 points per game. That figure would rank third among National Junior College Athletic Association Division II schools had he appeared in enough games to qualify.
Hill, who attended Kinston High School but did not play basketball, said the coming weeks will reveal much about his team.
“We’ve got a couple of players that have been taking it serious from the get-go,” Hill said. “Now everybody’s starting to see — and our coach is making us realize — that it’s crunch time. Either you’re going to put out or you’re probably going to be on the bench. So it’s a very important part of the season.”
Dawson said the Lancers lost just one player, a reserve guard, to eligibility issues after December exams.
The rest, Dawson hopes, worked out on their own. Local players were given access to LCC’s gym for shootarounds and pickup games.
The layoff, freshman guard Mike Tyson said, can be overcome.
“A couple of us really weren’t in shape from the get-go, and then a big break like this,” he said. “I think we were playing all right. We’ve just got to get back into it and we’ve got to listen to each other more, and we’ll be all right.”
Dawson, who’s in his 36th year at the school, said the Lancers saw Guilford Tech during a multi-team jamboree in October, but he’s not sure what to expect.
Not that it really matters.
“My thing at this point is we’ve just got to do what we can do, and hopefully we can make some adjustments along the way that can offset some of the things they like to do,” Dawson said. “And then in the end, hopefully, we’ll have a chance to win.”
A different story
LCC’s women have experienced neither a long break nor a sputtering start.
The Lancers, who play host to Catawba Valley CC today at 1 p.m., are 10-3, including a 1-1 mark in Region X.
Fourth-year LCC coach Tad Parson, whose team went 7-15 last season, said his group is on the right track but has more to accomplish.
“It’s a big improvement from last year,” he said. “I’m, I guess, content with the way the girls are playing so far, but by no means am I satisfied. I think we’ve got the potential to go much further.”
Sophomore guard Dominique Graham leads LCC with 15.3 points per game. Sekethia Williams and Cana Marriott, both freshman guards, are also averaging in double figures for a team that’s scoring 75.1 points per game, good for 14th among Division II schools.
David Hall can be reached at (252) 559-1086 or at david.hall@kinston.com.