SENATOBIA – The Northwest Mississippi Community College men's basketball team (2-1) earned a hard fought come from behind win over Dyersburg State Community College (0-2) on Tuesday evening, rallying from down double digits in the first half to win 108-96 for their first 100-point game at home since a 105-67 win over Piney Wood Post Grad on November 1, 2022.
Head Coach John Redman said he wasn't worried after the early hole because of the team's dedication to the gameplan.
"I thought everyone stayed composed and stayed together. It's how we play. It is a system. Our run came and it came in in bunches. I thought our defense may have given layups up, but it's how we play. We wear guys out."
The game didn't start out with much to cheer for as the Rangers found themselves in a 14-0 hole to kick off the game, not scoring until the four minutes in with a pair of free throws from Demetrius Duffy got Northwest on the board.
From there, it was hard push back by the home team who eventually cut the deficit to single digits at 29-20 with 11:20 to go in the first half and even took a brief lead when Chancellor Terry hit a three with under two and a half minutes to play, giving the Rangers their first lead of the game at 39-38.
"I think we just trusted the offense that Coach Newman put in," Zahir Gutierrez said. "We started to trust each other and moving the ball around, stopped dribbling too much and passed ahead."
Dyersburg recovered to close the half with the advantage, but the Rangers fast paced style of play had done the damage and they had made it a brand-new ball game going into the second half, only down 43-41.
The offense for the Eagles recovered to open the second half and with just over 15 minutes to go in the game, Northwest again found themselves down by double figures with DSCC taking a 60-50 lead and again after cutting it to just a six point deficit when the Eagles rallied to extend the lead to 74-62 but that is when the three point shooting really began to head up for Northwest's side of the ball.
A three from Gutierrez, who led the team in scoring on the night with 29 points, sparked a run that closed the gap to 83-77 with under 7:30 to go and just a few minutes later saw back-to-back three's tie the game at 85.
That was part of a 23-4 run that burst the game wide open for Northwest as they not only took their first double digit lead of the game and also eclipsed the century mark, going up 100-89 on a Duffy layup that essentially sealed the game with just over two minutes to go.
Gutierrez, who transferred to the Rangers this season from Pearl River Community College, said the home crowd really was big in coming back as momentum built for Northwest.
"The atmosphere that the fans brought tonight definitely helped turn it around. They gave us that boost of energy that we needed towards the end. We knew we were going to tire them out eventually they were going to give in."
The rest would just be window dressings as Northwest cleaned up a 108-96 win for their first home win of the season and their first time with two wins in their first three games to open the season since 2022-23. It was also the first time since 2019-20 that the Rangers have scored over 100 points in a game multiple times in a season.
Northwest was particularly effective from deep in the second half, making 10 of 17 threes in the second half for a nearly 60 percent clip.
"That's part of the whole system," Redman said. "Shoot it and go get it. Shoot it and go get it. Our guys have really bought into that and I'm really proud of them."
Three other Rangers joined Gutierrez in double figures with Dakota Morris adding 18 points, while Duffy finished with 14 and Houston Cunningham picking up 10 points. Duffy finished with a double-double, adding 13 rebounds to his stat line and had three assists to boot.
Northwest spread the ball around well with 20 assists as a team and also continued to cause chaos with 17 steals shared by nine different players.
"Every day in practice we work on the defense for a lot of time and do a lot of running and conditioning, that way we can go as deep as we did today," Gutierrez said.
Redman added it's about building on what they are embracing now.
"I want to score 120. We are averaging 104 and that's not enough. I told the guys that we only scored 41 points in the first half. If we were playing how I want to play, we would have had 130. We are going to work on cleaning our offense up, get our rotation a little tighter, but man, the guys played really well."
The Rangers have a long layoff over the next six days, with their next contest scheduled for November 10th when they host Arkansas State University – Newport at 7:30 pm at Howard Coliseum. It's all part of a stretch of five straight home games for Northwest and a run of four games in eight days.
You can find more information on the Rangers schedule by visiting nwccrangers.com or by following along with Northwest on social media.
