Box Score The Dodge City Community College men's basketball team was looking for a quick start to the Conq Classic after suffering their first loss of the season a week ago at the hand of #2 South Plains College. Unfortunately the Conqs ran into an extremely hot team that was hungry for a win of their own in Redlands Community College, the end result was a 102-87 defeat for the Conqs.

The first half did not get off to a good start for Dodge City. They found themselves in an early hole mostly due to the blistering shooting pace of the Cougars. AJ McNeil and Anthony Love led a Redlands attack that saw them shoot 57% from the field and behind the three point line in the first 20 minutes of the game. The Cougars got off to a good start shooting and jumped out to an early double digit lead on Dodge. At one point midway through the first half, the lead had ballooned to 16 points. The Conqs regained their footing and started to fight back in the game. They managed to cut the lead back to 10 points with just under six minutes remaining in the game at 38-28. Dodge continued to hold the score right around the ten point mark for the remainder of the half going into the break trailing by a score of 53-41. 

The second half saw a much better effort for the Conqs as they battled to try to cut into the Redlands lead. The Cougars pushed their lead out to 18 early in the second half, but the Conqs were not done and chipped away at the lead. Finally the Conqs managed to get their deficit back to single digits with about five and a half minutes remaining in the game. At one point Dodge City had the lead to eight and had three different chances to cut the lead to six, but came up empty all three times. They also cut the lead to nine with just over three minutes remaining, but Redlands hit a huge three to stretch the lead back to double digits. That shot seemed to be the dagger in the Conqs hopes, as they were never able to get inside of ten points the rest of the game and eventually fell by the final score of 102-87.

Jyrus Freels continued his torrid pace as he scored 23 points and grabbed 14 rebounds for his fourth double-double in five games. Justice Dixon and Trey Hill each were in double digits with 17 and 15 points respectively. UniQue Mency struggled shooting the ball, but pitched in with five points and two steals.

The Conqs are back in action Saturday night against Hesston College.