TAYLORSVILLE, Utah (February 28, 2018) - All season long, the Salt Lake Community College Bruins had three goals - win the Scenic West Athletic Conference; win the Region 18 tournament championships; win the NJCAA national title.
The Bruins completed the first of those three goals Saturday with a defeat of Colorado Northwestern, giving Salt Lake a share of the league title (SLCC owns a head-to-head edge over co-champ Southern Idaho). Now the Bruins, who earns the top seed in this week's league tourney due to their tiebreaker advantage over CSI, will prepare to travel to Ephraim and Snow College for the Region 18 tourney. The tournament, which will feature each team in the Scenic West Athletic Conference, is annually one of the more competitive region tourneys of the entire NJCAA.
All that separates the Bruins from their second goal now is two wins, albeit extremely tough wins to come by in the mind of SLCC coach
Todd Phillips.
"We are excited for our conference tournament," he said. "The goal is to be playing our best basketball this time of the year. All of our hard work is geared for this time of year."
The tournament format sees the league's fourth-place and fifth-place teams playing in a play-in style game Thursday evening. This year's game will feature Snow College and Colorado Northwestern, a year after Snow played in the region title game. The winner of that game will advance to play Salt Lake in a Friday semifinal, with the Bruins going a combined 6-0 against both programs.
Southern Idaho, who will play as the two-seed, will play USU Eastern in a semifinal on Friday. Salt Lake earned the season series win over both programs, but suffered a loss to each program.Â
The league's championship game is scheduled for Saturday.Â
Phillips said his team has been preparing for the challenge of this tournament all season.
"I think our guys will be dialed in and ready to play," he said. "To win at the tournament, you have to execute and limit turnovers. We tell our guys every possession counts in games like these."
