Shelton St. downs MCC

from staff reports
The Meridian Star

The Meridian Community College men’s basketball team battled toe-to-toe with highly-touted Shelton State Tuesday night before falling 71-64 in area junior-college basketball action at MCC’s Graham Gymnasium.Shelton, which began the season ranked No. 13 in the nation, improved to 7-2 while MCC fell to 3-4.

MCC trailed just 35-33 at halftime, but head coach George Brooks took no comfort in a close loss to the highly-touted visitors.

“We lost. There’s no such thing as a good loss,” Brooks said. “We did some things better than we did last week and the guys played hard.”

Freshman forward Santez Johnson pumped in a game-high and career-high 22 points for MCC, while Dexter Leflore scored 16 points; ex-Meridian High standout Chris Leggett scored nine; and freshman Regis Huddleston of Bay Springs had eight.

“I thought we played well,” Johnson said. “We’ve got a young team and we’re improving.”

Leon McKinney scored 17 points, Lakendrix Madison hit five 3-pointers and finished with 16 points and Rayshon Coleman scored 12 for Shelton State.

MCC’s women go to Delgado, La. tonight, then the Lady Eagles and Eagles host Coahoma Saturday at 4 and 6 p.m.

— Rocky Higginbotham