{"id":18862,"date":"2018-02-06T12:44:44","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T17:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=18862"},"modified":"2018-02-07T13:58:44","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T18:58:44","slug":"mens-basketball-begins-final-eight-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2018\/02\/06\/mens-basketball-begins-final-eight-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Men’s basketball begins final eight games"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0With a 12-10 record and only eight games left, the Sinclair men\u2019s basketball team is at a critical point in the season.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cI can sum [the season] up in one word: Injuries,\u201d head coach Jeff Price said. \u201cWe really have not had any consistency in our lineup because we have had constant injuries. To these guys\u2019 credit they\u2019ve been fighting through different lineups and different continuities. It seems like every game we have to learn how to play with a different lineup.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Among the players fighting injuries this season are sophomore forward LiDonta Hicks-Gentry, freshman guards Quantes Jackson and Isaiah Trice and freshman guard\/forward Michael (Isaiah) Collier. Among these four players, Jackson, Trice and Hicks-Gentry have all been named OCCAC players of the week. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s hard to get people to understand this, but we are a young team,\u201d Coach Price added. \u201cEveryone says, \u2018Well you\u2019re a junior college, you only get them for two years,\u2019 but we only have two sophomores, and [LiDonta] is the only one who has real, true game experience.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0With big games ahead, the focus is still on Coach Price\u2019s famous three C\u2019s: Classroom, Community Service and Competition. While the goal is always to win games, the ultimate goal is to win all around, especially in the classroom.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The team had two players, freshmen Nicoloy Bailey and Alec Holtrey, make the OCCAC All-Academic Team in the fall. If they keep their grades up through the spring semester, they will be Academic All-Americans. That would double the amount of Academic All-Americans the team has had in its history. This all comes back to the Classroom goal of graduation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cYou want to talk about a monumental win, a signature win, that\u2019s the signature win,\u201d said Price. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t trade [graduation] for a national championship. We tell people all the time: we are built for diplomas and we chase the rings.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The Pride still has a chance to rise on the conference standings list, with seven of their eight remaining games being against conference opponents. Sinclair is only 4 games back from the lead. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cOur biggest strength this year is the fact that our guys can adapt and learn,\u201d Price stated. \u201cIf we have mistakes, we have really gotten better at fixing those mistakes and recovering from them. I think our most consistent asset is we can shoot the ball from the three-point line.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0This certainly holds true, with the team averaging 34.5% from long-range. Hicks-Gentry is shooting 42.3% on threes as a post player, leading the team in this category.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cI allow my players, if you can shoot it, I\u2019m going to let you,\u201d Price said. \u201cI tell them, \u2018You need to be basketball players, and basketball players shoot the ball.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The team will play Owens Community College on the road Wed., Feb. 7, with a three-game home stretch following.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paul Helmers<\/strong>
\nSports Editor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0With a 12-10 record and only eight games left, the Sinclair men\u2019s basketball team is at a critical point in the season. \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cI can sum [the season] up in one word: Injuries,\u201d head coach Jeff Price said. \u201cWe really have not had any consistency in our lineup because we have had constant injuries. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":18868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2114,2102,2107,3],"tags":[1392,589,2085,14,1383,930],"class_list":["post-18862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-campus-life","category-sports","category-tartan-news","tag-basketball","tag-mens-basketball","tag-paul-helmers","tag-sinclair","tag-sports","tag-tartan-pride"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/team.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-4Ue","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18862"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18950,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18862\/revisions\/18950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}