ROCK SPRINGS, WY – The Laramie County Community College men's basketball team rallied in the second half to take down the Western Wyoming Community College Thunderbirds on the road 80-76 for their 14th win of the year and a 4-3 record in conference play.
"(Getting the) tiebreaker was big, because now we get to go on the road and play Casper and then we get Northwest coming into our place so we can get out of that three-four spot and try to get into that second spot," Saulsberry said. "That two seed is still very much alive for us and this win helped us keep that alive."
After trailing by early after an opening run by Western Wyoming to give the Mustangs the opening lead but the Golden Eagles were able to fight there way back into the game to take their first lead at 32-31 and eventually went into the half with a slight edge at 35-33 advantage thanks to the come back rally.
Laramie County gave the lead back to Western Wyoming in the opening minutes of the second half and the Mustangs would build the lead to 55-46 after eight minutes to force a timeout from the Golden Eagles where Head Coach DeWayne Saulsberry said he asked the team to dig in.
"I'd like to say I made some great coaching move but to be quite honest I called the timeout and said you have to do better. Do what you are doing, do what we worked on, but do it better and we were able to get them slowed down a bit."
LCCC battled back to keep it within six and a pair of threes from Tristan Starks evened the game at 64 and a few minutes later a Ben Hageman three kept it back to 68-67 after Western again tried to pull away.
That set a trend for the next few minutes as neither team was able to get more than one possession away with ties at 71 and 73 before Xavier McCord earned an and-one free throw with 1:11 to go to give LCCC a 76-73 lead but a three from the left corner again evened the game with 54.3 seconds to go.
Hageman took the ball to the left side for a layup to give the Golden Eagles the 78-76 lead with under 30 seconds to go giving the Mustangs the chance to tie.
On the ensuing possession a layup was left on the front of the rim and Brandon Tchouya was able to make two free throws on one and ones to make the lead four and the Golden Eagles wrapped up the game with an 80-76 win to end a two-game losing streak and improve to 4-3 in conference play.
The Laramie County effort was led by Starks who finished with 25 points to lead all scorers and the sophomore was a strong 5-7 from deep in an effort that saw LCCC shoot 42.9 percent from three.
"Tristan got back into it tonight. He's been off for the last three or four games and tonight he really got going and we really worked on him mentally getting his confidence back so it was good to see him step up and make shots," Saulsberry said.
McCord finished with 19 points giving him the Laramie County all time scoring record with 1308 in his career with the Golden Eagles.
"What he's meant to me and meant to this program, what he means to our kids, I can't put into words," Saulsberry said.
Rounding out the leading scorers for LCCC were Hageman and Brandon Tchouya who both added 14 to the winning effort.
Laramie County's shooting in the second half was a difference maker, with the Golden Eagles making 63 percent of their shots from the field and two thirds of their three pointers (6-9) and every point was needed in the end.
The Golden Eagles will take on the Casper College Thunderbirds on Saturday afternoon in their next game as they look to split the season series. After that they return home to take on Northwest College for sophomore night at Storey Gym.