Elgin Community College’s men’s basketball team was defeated by North Lake College of Irving, Texas in the national championship by a score of 66-56, despite fighting back from a 22 point deficit.

In the eight team bracket to crown a champion, ECC also defeated Brookdale Community College of New Jersey with a score of 82-53. They then went on to defeat Herkimer County Community College of New York with a score of 57-42, before falling to North Lake in the finals of the tournament.

This was the farthest men’s basketball has ever gone in school history and the team, while sad about the championship lost, were more than excited with what they did this season.

One primary member of this team who was more than excited about this season and the post season run was head coach Reed Nosbisch.

When asked about the championship game,“Everything went according to plan except for the championship game, I thought that the first 20 minutes that we played on Thursday against Brookdale was probably the best 20 minutes that we had played in a while. We were ready, we weren’t so nervous and then the second day against Herkimer I thought that we played one of the best defensive games we played all season,” Nosbisch said.

However, the finals of the tournament did not go as planned, as they failed to capture the championship and lost to North Lake, who captured their third title in school history.

“Saturday (championship game) the final score didn’t show a championship game, we had a 10 minute stretch in the second half that was not very good and we put ourselves in a deep hole and ultimately we ran out of time and could not get back from the 20 point deficit,” Nosbisch said.

Fatigue could have been the ultimate cause of not only ECC’s but North Lake’s struggle. After playing all of the playoffs, including three straight games, both teams had to be feeling the fatigue in the championship game.

Nosbisch had a sense of pride when talking about the season as a whole.

“Right after the game, someone asked me ‘your probably disappointed’ and I said disappointed… that’s not the right word to use. Did we want to win? Of course we did. We came out of the region game as a two seed so we were not even supposed to make it out of that, so two weeks later playing in the national championship was something we didn’t expect to happen,” Nosbisch said.

Small Forward Chaquille Bennett shared his happiness and sorrow about the season’s final result.

“Well, throughout the tournament, I didn’t play as many minutes but that did not bother me at all, because all and all I was there for my teammates and those who supported us as a group. I feel like me and along with a couple other bench players we cheered our butts off and did as much as we could to support our team and make them do better,” Bennett said.

With all of this tournament talk over with and the outcome we did not want, the players are already looking forward to next year. With six players confirmed to be returning and more recruits coming in our way, the future does look brighter for the men’s basketball team!