Confident Trojans win fifth straight

The Colby Community College Trojans men's basketball team extended their winning streak to five with an 82-71 win over Garden City Wednesday night at the Colby Community Building.

Colby shot a scorching 58 percent (32 of 55) from the field, including 9 of 13 behind the 3-point line.

"We have been playing good basketball lately because of the confidence we are playing with," said Trojans head coach Rusty Grafel. "Garden City is a good team that plays physical and has size, we did a good job of disrupting their offense at times, and I thought we pushed the ball well in the first half." 

As they have done recently, Colby controlled the contest from the opening tip. An early 7-0 run aided in a 10-point lead nine minutes into the game. The Broncbusters were able to trim the margin to 25-23, but the Trojans capitalized on turnovers and had a 41-30 cushion at the break.

In the early minutes of the second half Colby increased the lead to 18. The closest Garden would get again was nine.

"A lot of this game is mental, and we have done a good job playing together and knowing we are a good team," Grafel said.

Playing together is one of the reasons the Trojans lead the Jayhawk Conference in assists per game (18.3). They added another 19 Wednesday, which created a balanced attack for Grafel's squad.

"Having four guys scoring in double figures is something I would always like to see, and Gabe Gyamfi was relentless on the glass."

Along with 12 rebounds, Gyamfi also led Trojan scoring with 20 points. David Hall had 18, and Ty Dalton and Xavier Smith each poured in 16.

Colby, now 12-4 overall and 8-4 in the Jayhawk Conference, controlled the boards 33-29 including 12 at the offensive end.

Garden City (11-5, 7-5) was led by Pierre Johnson, who scored all but one of his 24 points in the second half. Kendale Hampton had 16 including five 3-pointers.

Saturday Colby will travel to El Dorado to take on Butler Community College (7-8, 4-8) at 7:30 p.m.