Cougars Stun Roxbury for Seventh Straight Win

MANCHESTER, CT – The date had been circled on calendars for a long time and with good reason. Both teams took six game winning streaks into the game and are considered amongst the top junior college teams in New England.

The lone match-up between NJCAA region 21 rivals Roxbury CC (17-4) and Manchester CC (15-2) at East Catholic Saturday afternoon ended with an 84-61 MCC victory, but the 23-point margin of victory masks the intensity of a game that was played fast and furious by both teams.

“Defensively, we stayed in our spots,” MCC Head Coach Robert Turner said after his team won for the seventh straight time, closing out January a perfect 7-0. “We also played to our strengths. We have a lot of really great individual players that can go to the basket – Shanika (Hines) and Jhenel (Franklin) – they both played really well today. They remained disciplined which is really important defensively. The biggest change was that defensively they buckled down and forced Roxbury to take some bad shots.”

Hines poured in a game-high 24 points, including 6 for 6 from the free-throw line. The NJCAA pre-season All-American and former All-State player at Manchester High came into the game with a hot hand, having scored 41 against Springfield Tech Thursday night.

It was Katurah Andrews, however, who made the loudest statement. The sophomore from East Hartford scored 22 points, pulled down 14 rebounds and slapped a Roxbury pass out of bounds in the game’s waning minutes, putting a bold faced punctuation mark on her team’s most impressive victory to date. Andrews also made both of her free-throw attempts.

“Katurah played an excellent game,” Turner said. “She’s the X-factor. How we do really revolves around her defensively and offensively. She has great range as far as closing out offensive players, gets out on the wing very fast, and is an excellent jumper with very long arms. So she makes it very difficult for anybody to shoot over her.”

Andrews was quick to pass the praise along to her teammates.

“We can play as a team when we need to,” Andrews said. “We can pick it up and all pull together and do what we need to do to win against a good team. Roxbury is one of the best teams in the region.”

Jasmine McNeil led Roxbury with 20 points followed by Willeen Capehart with 14.

Franklin put on a ball control clinic, running the game from the backcourt and picked up 13 points between nine steals, eight rebounds and eight assists. “We came to win,” Franklin said. “We had heard about them, everyone was talking about them, so we knew we had to bring our “A” game.”
The Cougars, who are undefeated at home this season, received another outstanding game from freshman Erika Murphy (Torrington), who had 19 points and nine rebounds.

MCC controlled the game from the outset and never trailed. Andrews scored the first basket and Hines followed with a three-pointer to give the Cougars an early 5-0 lead. MCC took a mere 35-32 lead to the intermission, but a 20-4 run early in the second half gave the Cougars a 16-point lead with 13 minutes to play. The 23-point margin at the final buzzer was the Cougars’ largest lead of the afternoon.

MCC is off until Saturday, February 7th when it travels to Brockton, MA for a 1pm game against Massasoit CC before returning home for another game that should already be circled on the calendar. The Cougars host UConn-Avery Point, the only team to beat them on the court this season, at 8pm on Wednesday February 11th. UCAP beat the Cougars 77-75 in a game they trailed by 17 points midway through the second half on December 16th in Groton. It will be the final home game for the MCC Woman’s basketball team this season.