NMMI Sports Press
The New Mexico Military Institute Bronco men's basketball team showed tenacity, but inexperience, in their season-opening loss at home to Garden City Community College, 96-80.
The youthful Broncos – with only four sophomores on this year's squad and not a single returning player from last season's roster – let the aptly named Brocbusters surge ahead to a 49-33 lead at halftime.
Eight minutes into the second half, that 16-point lead turned into a 26-point deficit.
But rather than hang their heads and accept defeat, NMMI bounced back in a big way: out-rebounding, out-shooting, and out-hustling Garden City over the next 10 minutes, getting as close as 10 points, 88-78, on a crowd-raising dunk by freshman power forward Tanis Ndjonga with 1:58 left to play.
"This is the unpredictability of a young, new team," said Bronco head coach Sean Schooley. "The most important thing was that we didn't quit. We were down by well over 20 points, and then almost cut that lead to single digits. And what got us back wasn't all the threes we hit, it was the fact that we started diving on the floor for balls and continued to rebound. I was proud of that."
Ndjonga was the top scorer for the Broncos, racking up 22 points in the paint on 10-14 shooting. Fellow freshman Quentin Bolton had 16 points, along with 10 rebounds, to earn his first collegiate-level double-double.
Next up for NMMI will be an extended series of road games. They'll travel first to Oklahoma for a pair of games on Sunday and Monday, Nov. 6 & 7, vs. Redland Community College and Seminole State College; head over to Kansas for another game vs. Garden City on Tuesday; then over to Texas for a pair of games on Friday and Saturday in the Midland Classic.
"It's good for us – we need to learn how to compete and win on the road," said coach Schooley. "Junior college road trips will put dog-years on your life, but these are 19-year old young men. They should respond and we're going to see what happens."
The Broncos next home game won't come until the end of the month, against Lamar Community College on Wednesday, Nov. 30. That game will be held in the Cahoon Armory gym on the NMMI campus at 6:30 pm MST.