Fourth-seeded EMCC Lions set for 2022 MACCC Basketball Tournament
The fourth-seeded EMCC Lions are set to participate in this week's MACCC Basketball Tournament being hosted by Pearl River Community College in Poplarville.
SCOOBA — East Mississippi Community College's basketball teams will compete in this week's MACCC Basketball Tournament (Feb. 21-24) to be hosted by Pearl River Community College in Poplarville. Women's opening-round tournament action will be held Monday and first-round men's play will take place Tuesday at PRCC's Marvin R. White Coliseum. Game times will be 1:00, 3:00, 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. during both days of opening-round competition.
Head coach Sharon Thompson's seventh-seeded EMCC Lady Lions (11-11 overall & 8-6 in MACCC) will take on No. 2 seed Southwest Mississippi (16-7, 11-3 in MACCC) at 5:30 p.m. during Monday's women's quarterfinals. The winner of the EMCC-SMCC contest will advance to Wednesday's semifinals (1 p.m.) to meet the winner of Monday's 3 p.m. game pitting third-seeded Coahoma against No. 6 seed Itawamba.
The other side of the women's bracket will feature Monday's quarterfinal-round matchups between No. 4 seed Jones and fifth-seeded Copiah-Lincoln (1 p.m.) as well as top-seeded and host Pearl River versus No. 8 seed Northwest Mississippi (7:30 p.m.).
On the men's side, head coach Billy Begley's fourth-seeded EMCC Lions (17-6 overall and 10-4 in MACCC) are paired against No. 5 seed Northwest Mississippi (17-6, 9-5 in MACCC) in a 1 p.m. Tuesday quarterfinal-round contest. The winner of the EMCC-NWCC game will move on to meet Tuesday's winner between top-seeded Pearl River and No. 8 seed Jones during Wednesday's semifinals (7:30 p.m.).
The other side of the men's bracket will feature Tuesday's quarterfinal-round meetings between No. 3 seed Meridian and sixth-seeded Southwest Mississippi (3 p.m.) along with second-seeded Northeast Mississippi against No. 7 seed Hinds (5:30 p.m.).
Thursday's championship games will be played at 5:30 p.m. (women's) and 7:30 p.m. (men's) on the PRCC campus.
Pearl River Community College earned the right to host this year's MACCC Basketball Tournament by claiming the regular-season men's conference championship with an unblemished 14-0 league mark. The Wildcats enter postseason play with a 19-2 overall record and No. 18 NJCAA Division I ranking as of this past week. PRCC also captured this year's regular-season women's conference championship after posting records of 19-4 overall and 12-2 in conference play.
Both of East Mississippi's basketball teams have recently collected regular-season conference championships. Most recently, the Lady Lions capped a 19-game winning streak two years ago by earning EMCC's first women's basketball conference title since 1983-84. As tournament hosts in 2020, the EMCC women knocked off then-No. 10 and three-time reigning conference champions Jones College, 87-73 in double overtime, in the title game after besting Mississippi Gulf Coast and Southwest Mississippi earlier during the Scooba-hosted tournament.
The year prior, the EMCC men's team took down 2019 tournament host Jones College, 61-58, in the championship contest to claim the Lions' first men's basketball conference title since the 1930s. EMCC bested East Central and 2018 conference champion Pearl River to advance to the title tilt three years ago in Ellisville.
2022 MACCC Men's Basketball Tournament Bracket
2022 MACCC Women's Basketball Tournament Bracket
