The Lincoln Land men's basketball saw their season end at the hands of Parkland, 86-42 on Tuesday evening.
The Loggers went into to round 1 of the NJCAA Region 24 region tournaments seeded #8 and had a tall order to travel to the #1 seeded Parkland College Cobras. Lincoln Land was in the contest early holding a few leads on their way to being up 11-10 8:00 in to the contest. However, from that point, the wheels started to come off for the Loggers. Lincoln Land's defense had been solid and allowed them to continue to stay close at 17-16 with less than 10:00 to go in the half. This is where things began to go south. Parkland rattled off 17 straight points on only 6 possessions and knocked in threes on back-to-back-to-back possessions followed by a two pointer and then two more threes to rush ahead. Scoring droughts of 3:00 and 4:30 and the final 3:51 allowed Parkland to close the first half on a 29-10 run to get up double digits and never looked back. Lincoln Land failed to score a bucket in the final 3:51 of the first half and the Loggers found themselves down 39-21 going in to half. The scoring struggles continued as Parkland began the half on a 14-0 run and Lincoln Land took nearly 7:00 more minutes to get their next bucket. By then the game was a 30-point contest and never closer the rest of the way. Parkland cruised the final 13:00 minutes to their 86-42 win.
Only 7 Loggers scored on the evening and sophomore Kendall Lavender was the only one to get to double digits ending with a team high 10. Camden Nelson (7) and AJ Tillman (8) were the only other two Loggers with 3+ field goals.
Lincoln Land ends the season 4-24. Although overall a frustrating season, looking back the Loggers had some entertaining and exciting games including three 1 point games, where the Loggers went 1-2. AJ Tillman had the high scoring mark of the year putting in 24 points against Bryant and Stratton (WI) on January 25th. LLCC as a team put up 104 points against Quincy University's JV, the most points in a game in over a decade. And one of the most notable was their 75-71 victory over John Wood to close the home and regular season.
Lincoln Land will always be thankful for the time and effort put in by all, but especially the sophomores who saw their LLCC and NJCAA careers end on Tuesday evening. Thank you goes to #12 Kendall Lavender, #22 Camden Nelson, #24 Logan Tomlinson, and #30 Mick Downs.
