The Cowley College men’s basketball team poses with the NJCAA National Tournament runner-up trophy Saturday night in Hutchinson after falling to Coffeyville 108-99 in the national title game. (Photo courtesy Cowley College)
HUTCHINSON — The Cowley Tigers men’s basketball team clawed back from 24 points down Saturday night in the second half to within three points with 35 second left in the NJCAA Men’s Division I National Championship game, but couldn’t close the gap in time against fellow Jayhawk East Conference rival Coffeyville.
The Red Ravens secured the win in the all-Kansas national title contest 108-99 and the Tigers finished the season runners-up after setting numerous tournament records in their first trip back in the national spotlight in 64 years.
“Great game, what a great championship game,” Cowley College Head Coach Tommy DeSalme told KSOK-NewsCow after the loss inside Hutchinson Sports Arena. “I woke up this morning and I was calm and had a great peace to me. Going into this game, I was going to be happy with whatever happened.
“If we won it great, if Coffeyville won it great. A really good friend of mine won him a national championship tonight.”
Jay Herkelman’s Red Ravens were hot early and led at halftime 60-40, with much of the attack happening in the paint where Coffeyville outscored the Tigers 44-14 at the break.
In Cowley’s first game of the tournament, the Tigers set tournament records for combined game score and 3s made in a single game (22). Cowley also set a tournament record in total points scored with 454 points — beating the record of 450 points that had stood since 1977.
But the Red Ravens deployed tight defense along the perimeter and Cowley went into halftime shooting just 5-of-17 from beyond the arc.
Overall, Cowley shot just 35 percent from the field for the first half, while Coffeyville couldn’t miss a bucket and went into the locker room shooting 63 percent.
To make matters worse for the Tigers, their star sophomore All-American and junior college player-of-the-year candidate, Dalen Ridgnal, left the game due to an injury in the early minutes of the second half and never returned.
With 15:40 left in the game, Cowley trailed 73-53 and it appeared the rout would continue.
But, like the Tigers did in the Elite 8, when they trailed the tournament No. 1 seed, Mineral Area College out of Missouri, by 25 points in the second half, Cowley found a way to come back.
Ark City High School alum Cevin Clark, who was named the Bud Obee Small Player of the Tournament and made 20 3s throughout the tournament, took charges and hit shots.
Teammates and fellow sophomores Mikel Henderson and Jacquez Yow also kept attacking and with 35 seconds, left, Cowley turned a blowout into a 3-point contest for the national title, but couldn’t find an open look to tie it.
Coffeyville’s Tylor Perry, who was named the tournament MVP, then smothered the Tigers’ comeback hopes.
“(The Red Ravens) did a great job,” DeSalme said. “They started out and they were hot. And they made a lot of tough plays, then we showed up in the second half. We fought. We’re a play away from winning the national championship, realistically, it’s 102-99 and we have a chance to cut it to one and we don’t make the play.
“We gave ourselves a great chance to win it and I thought it was a great championship game and the Jayhawk East showed out tonight.”
Henderson led Cowley in scoring with 21 points and Ridgnal had 17 before he was injured. Yow added 15. Clark and Shemarri Allen rounded out Tigers in double-figures, each with 11.
DeSalme said he wasn’t surprised his team was able to fight back, even with its leading-scorer out to injury after a collision in the corner on the defensive end of the floor for the Tigers knocked Ridgnal out of the game early in the second half.
“He’s probably the player of the year in JUCO, but we’re good enough to win without Dalen,” DeSalme said. “We’ve showed that a couple times this year and Jacquez really stepped up — a lot of people stepped up — but Jacquez should’ve earned him a scholarship tonight. The level of play he played.
“The guys — they will not quit.”
A year ago, COVID canceled the national tournament after Cowley qualified as an at-large bid and became a tourney team for the first time in 63 years.
This season, not only did the Tigers make sure they’d be a tournament team again, they went all the way to the national title game for the first time since the 1952-53 season, when Cowley County Community College was known as Arkansas City Junior College.
DeSalme said this year’s team will no doubt be in the Cowley Hall of Fame and remembered forever.
“The group of seven sophomores that were here as freshman last year — that’s a hall of fame team,” he said. “In 10 years they’ll be first-ballot hall of famers, and that’s what I told them (after the game in the locker room). You’ll remember this, the history that this team has made: region title, conference titles, getting to nationals for the first time in forever and then being national runner-up.
“At the hall of fame, when we come back, we’re not going remember this night. We’re going remember all those great things.”
