When South Arkansas College and Hocking (Ohio) College meet Monday in the first round of the NJCAA Division II Tournament, it will be a battle between two schools that are strikingly similar.
The Stars (21-8), the No. 17 seed, and the Hawks (23-6), the No. 16 seed, collide at 11 a.m. at the Mary Miller Center in Danville, Ill., with the winner advancing to face No. 1 seed Davidson-Davie (N.C.) Community College on Tuesday, while the loser will play a consolation game on Wednesday morning.
The similarities begin with SouthArk and Hocking both in the national tournament for the first time and their team scoring averages are nearly identical with the Stars at 89.3 points per game and the Hawks at 89.2.
Both schools also have deep benches with the Hawks having 11 players that have played in 25 or more games, while the Stars have eight players that have played 20 or more games with freshmen Telviyonta Henyard and Jakourion Key, a former standout at Junction City, having played 19 and 18 games, respectively.
But where they differ is how they reached the national tournament.
The Stars used a 17-3 run to break open a close game to top St. Louis (Mo.) Community College 94-75 to win the Central Plains District crown on Saturday.
The Hawks won the Great Lakes District A championship by topping Bay (Mich.) College 82-80 on Sunday after holding off a late rally.
“Bay College is a really tough opponent,” Hocking coach Ryan Miley said of Sunday’s game. “We had a lead for most of the game, just hanging around single digits, really just staying disciplined. We’ve had a couple of games like that this year that we lost. We had a five-point lead with a minute to go, I think we’ve had three games we’ve lost like that, so fixing our mistakes from those games and staying disciplined at the end of the game and pulling out a tight win. We had a nine-point lead with two minutes to go and they had the ball with a chance to win the game in a two-point game, so staying disciplined at the end of the game, staying down on shot fakes, just lock down defensively on that last possession.”
The Hawks have been on a torrid stretch since the start of 2024, winning 16 of 17 games with their lone blemish being an 80-79 loss at 15th-ranked Lakeland (Ohio) Community College on Feb. 24.
“I think guys sacrificing their stats, just trying to win,” Miley said of the key to his team’s play down the stretch. “They’re not really worried about their numbers right now. I think in the first half of the year, everybody was trying to get out and get their numbers. I think once they lost a couple of games, they had to buy in to what we do and sacrifice their stats for the team. I think we came back with that mentality once we came back from Christmas break.”
The Hawks have certainly been battle-tested, having picked up a road win at St. Clair County (Mich.) Community College while losing twice to Parkland (Ill.) College during non-conference play. Those two schools will meet in the second round on Tuesday night.
Hocking also played ranked teams in Lakeland and Bay, which were in the final Division II poll, along with playing Henry Ford (Mich.) Community College and Mott (Mich.) Community College, which were ranked earlier in the season.
“We really wanted to challenge ourselves this year,” Miley said. “That’s why we scheduled all of those teams in Michigan. Those are non-conference games. You don’t have to play those games, but we knew that was the one way we could get prepared for the postseason. We tried to go to all of the surrounding states and play the best competition we could.
“Going to play at Henry Ford, Schoolcraft, Mott, St. Clair, just seeing those type of level teams, you don’t get a lot of that in our conference, so we wanted to go up there and challenge ourselves, see where we were at and what we needed to work on before we got to this point.
“It was a huge part in our success in the second half of the season. Once we got into conference play, we had already played those top-level teams.”
Hocking opened its season by playing nine of their first 10 games on the road, and Miley said it helped the team gel.
“It did,” Miley said. “It’s almost like team bonding outings when you’re traveling like that, going out to eat. I do think that went a long way, just getting to know each other and getting more comfortable with each other.”