Cloud County Baseball Set to Open Region VI Tournament at Home Against Neosho
Following their best finish in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference West Division in program history, the Cloud County Community College baseball team will host just their second NJCAA Region VI playoff series when they take on Neosho County Community College for a best-of-three series beginning at 2 PM on Wednesday, May 11th.
Finishing in a tie with Colby for second place in the final regular-season standings of the KJCCC West Division, CCCC will enter as the number-three seed from the Jayhawk West and number-six seed overall in the 16-team tournament that will begin on Wednesday afternoon with eight best-of-three playoff series at the higher-seeded teams. Cloud County is joined by KJCCC West Division regular-season champion Barton, Colby, and Butler as schools from the KJCCC west to host a playoff series while East Division hosts will be Cowley, Kansas City Kansas, Johnson County, and Fort Scott. Game two of the series will take place on Thursday, May 12th with a 2 PM first pitch with an if-necessary game three set for Friday, May 13th at 2 PM
The matchup with Neosho County is just the second time on record that the T-Birds and Panthers have met up in an NJCAA Region VI playoff series with the previous occurrence taking place at the end of the 2017 season which was current head coach Eric Gilliland's first season at the helm of his alma mater. In the previous playoff series, Neosho would take game one by a score of 11-4 before seeing Cloud County force a winner-take-all game three with a 5-3 win in game two. With the winner moving on to the eight-team double-elimination portion of the tournament, Neosho would win by a score of 11-1 in seven innings to end the T-Birds season.
Wednesday's meeting between CCCC and NCCC will be just the sixth game between teams since 2000, with Neosho holding a 4-1 mark over the T-Birds in the previous matchups. Game one of the best-of-three series is also believed to be the first time that Neosho will play a game in Concordia and at Lee Doyen Field.
Finishing the regular season with a 39-15 overall record, Cloud County would win a program-record 21 games in the KJCCC this past season to finish conference play with a 21-11 record. Neosho meanwhile enters postseason play with a 24-31 overall record after finishing conference play with a 13-19 record in the Jayhawk East despite holding wins over three of the top four teams in the KJCCC East. Led by Cloud County alumnus Steve Murry in his 36th season at Neosho County, the Panthers last made the eight-team double-elimination portion of the Region VI Tournament in 2018 which also happens to be the last time that they finished the season with a winning record. NCCC has won the Region VI Tournament to advance to the JuCO World Series three times under Murry, with their last appearance in Grand Junction, Colorado coming in 2013 to cap off back-to-back appearances.
The winner of the Cloud County/Neosho series will take on the winner of the Kansas City Kansas/Pratt series which will begin at 1 PM on Wednesday. The Blue Devils will enter the Region VI Tournament as the number-three seed after finishing two games back of East Division champion Cowley and will take on a Beaver team that won three of their final four games of the regular season to make a postseason appearance for the first time since 2019.
Other opening-round best-of-three series across NJCAA Region VI will include number-one overall seed Cowley hosting Seward County, KJCCC West Division Champion Barton hosting Labette, Colby hosting Allen County, Johnson County hosting Dodge City, Butler hosting Coffeyville, and Fort Scott hosting Hutchinson. A full bracket can be found at the following link: 2022 NJCAA Plains District Tournament Bracket.
Fans wanting to follow along to all games of the CCCC/NCCC series can do so by tuning into a live stream on the T-Bird Sports Network (www.cloudtbirds.com/tbirdsportsnetwork) or with live statistics of the games at www.cloudtbirds.com/sidearmstats/baseball/summary. Cloud County assistant softball coach Kevin Rule will have live play-by-play on the video broadcasts for all games played in the series.