SPORTS: Lady Cardinals, Cardinals Ready for NJCAA Tournament
Television, radio, and newspaper reporters -- plus yours truly -- headed to Cardinal Gym on the TVCC Athens campus Wednesday for TVCC NJCAA Tournament Media Day.
The Cardinals and the Lady Cardinals are headed to the national tournament next week after winning their respective Region XIV tournaments last week in Tyler.
The Lady Cardinals will travel to Lubbock for their tournament. TVCC, 31-2, enters the tournament as the No 3-seed. They earned a first-round bye and will play the McLennan vs. Murray State winner on Friday, March 24.
Lady Cardinals Coach Precious Ivy said she wants her players to focus on Trinity Valley.
"We can control us; we can't control anybody else," she said. "So we make sure that we do what we do, and we execute how we execute, and that helps us in the long run."
The Lady Cardinals will be making their 16th straight appearance in the national tournament.
The Cardinals will be playing their tournament in Hutchinson, Kansas. The Cards, 14-18, come in as the No. 18-seed. They will open the tournament against Vincennes College on Monday, March 20.
The TVCC men are going into the tournament as an underdog, but that's primarily because of what happened early in the season. But this Cardinal team has grown throughout the season.
"It was a fight in the beginning," said Cardinal Coach Mark Leslie. "Once the freshmen and the new guys assimilated, and we figured out who's who and our roles, we started playing better."
That fact was borne in the Region XIV Tournament when the Cardinals knocked off the No. 1-seed and the No. 2-seed on their way to the title.
The Cardinals are making their 10 appearances at the national tournament and their seventh in the past 11 years.
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