By Matt Hickman/Sierra Vista Herald
DOUGLAS — After impressive starts to the season, the basketball teams from Cochise College answered the bell impressively in their respective conference openers Thursday at home against Phoenix College.
The Cochise men had little trouble in dropping a 94-72 win over the Bears. Demeco Blue led the Apaches with 16 points, followed by Anddrew Hawkins with 14, Tim Jacobs with 13, Tevin Caldwell with 11 and Jordan Russell with 10.
“I think we’re playing good basketball. At this point in time, we’re playing unselfish basketball,” Cochise head coach Jerry Carrillo said. “Defensively, we played really ell. Our objective is to get 100 possessions offensively and to force our opponents’ field goal percentage under 35 percent. We held them to 33 percent for the game.”
Earlier Thursday, the Cochise women went 4-0 with a 68-56 win over Phoenix College.
Yvonte Neal led the way for the Apaches with 16 points, followed by Johnishia Welles with 15, Ashley Mitchell with 11 and Tianna Brown with nine.
“I’ll give Phoenix a lot of credit; they stay with things, they’re scrappy and they play hard,” Cochise head coach Laura Hughes said. “We get up on teams and we don’t know how to build the lead. We don’t have the killer instinct. We controlled this game the entire time, we just didn’t put it away.”
On Saturday, the Cochise men and women are again at home against Chandler-Gilbert. The women’s game begins at 5:30 p.m., followed by the men’s game at 7:30. Admission is free to all regular-season home games.