Thursday, August 4, 2011

Basketball Schedule Released

OTTUMWA --- Non-conference home games against three tough opponents, all of whom will be making their first-ever trip to the Hellyer Student Life Center, highlight Indian Hills Community College’s 2011-12 basketball schedule.

The challenging schedule includes 18 home dates and four home tournaments.

Two of the three teams traveling to Ottumwa for the first time are from Texas and each has won a national championship in the past six years. Howard College will play in the Warriors’ PCS Classic in December; Paris Junior College will visit for a regular-season game in early January.

Paris won the national crown in 2005 and Howard College took the title in 2010.

Vincennes (Ind.) University is on the IHCC basketball schedule for the first time in almost two decades. The teams have never met in a regular-season tilt. They will play a pair of games next season.

The Warriors will battle all five of the Division I schools from Missouri, which they haven’t done in the same year since the 2005-06 campaign. IHCC will play home-and-home series with Moberly, Missouri State-West Plains and State Fair. They will take on both Three Rivers and Mineral Area in a tourney in Park Hills, Mo.

The season will begin with a pair of games in the Jack Blackwell Tire Classic Nov. 4-5. Another newcomer to the schedule, Indiana Dabney University, and traditional power Highland CC from Illinois will provide the opposition for Indian Hills in that tournament.

In addition to the season-opening classic and the one in which Howard will play, Indian Hills will also host Mid Michigan, John Wood and Carl Sandburg in the Reed Overhead Doors Classic in November. Chicago schools Kennedy-King and Olive-Harvey will be the IHCC opponents in the HyVee Classic in January.

The six-game conference slate begins with road games at Marshalltown CC Jan. 21 and Iowa Western CC Jan. 28. The next three league games will be at home before the regular-season finale at Southeastern on Feb. 25.

The Warriors were 23-10 last year and tied with Southeastern for the conference regular-season crown with a 4-2 mark. Southeastern won both games in the best-of-three series to determine the Region 11 postseason champ.

The upcoming season will mark the debut for new head coach Barret Peery who was hired in April. He has been busy since then assembling the team that Warrior fans hope will make a run at a conference title and a national tournament trip.

The full 2011-12 schedule can be found on the basketball page on the Indian Hills website at www.indianhills.edu. Ticket information for the 18-game home schedule will be released later in August.