by Lavi Aulck
Sports Editor

Despite a very solid overall record, Shoreline’s men’s basketball team is in the middle of the pack in the chase for the Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges (NWAACC) North Division championship title.

Heading into their January 16 clash with division rival Olympic Community College (1-3 season, 3-10 overall), the Dolphins sit in 6th place in the NWACC North Division with one win and two

losses (1-2), despite a 10-6 overall record. SCC’s poor start to division play is primarily due to the strength of the opponents the squad has had on their division calendar.

“Our (division) record is misleading, as we’ve played the better teams and have played them on the road,” said head coach Jeff Menday of the team’s rocky start. “We really have a chance now to run off four or five division games and I’m expecting to do that.”

The three opponents that SCC faced to open division play currently sit 1st, 3rd and 4th in the NWAACC North Division and have combined to go 33-15 overall. Meanwhile, the next four NWAACC opponents the Dolphins will face have a combined 15-40 overall record, setting the ‘Phins up to gain some momentum and consistency before facing the upper tier of NWAACC North foes again.

Sophomores JaRon Brown and Parys Fox have carried the offensive burden for the squad during division play. The guard-forward tandem scored nearly half of the team’s total points so far this season and one of the two has led the team in scoring in all but two of the team’s 15 games.

“That’s expected,” Menday said of the pair’s performance. “They are our sophomores. We have those two (to score) and one freshman also steps up every night. One night it could be Jeff Sterling, one night Stephan McCall, and one night it could be Mo Sanchez.”

The rebounding woes that troubled the team earlier in the year have improved, but the team’s “glass-cleaning” is still not where Menday believed it should be. “We’re a better rebounding team than last year but we still have to continue to improve,” he said. “We had outrebounded four of our last five opponents (heading into January 16th) so we are making improvements on it.”

At the same time, Menday believed that his team’s tenacity and aggressive style of play is what has carried them thus far and is also the key component to success in the long push towards the playoffs.

“(Our) players are very scrappy,” said Menday. “They play hard and get after it. To make the playoffs, we need to start winning the big games. I think we need to go at least 10-6 in the division, which I firmly believe we can do.”