GMC to host Hutchinson in national semifinal

Published 1:00 pm Monday, November 25, 2024

Junior college playoff football is coming to Milledgeville.

With the regular season and conference championships complete, the National Junior College Athletic Association released its Top 15 rankings and playoff seedings Monday. Georgia Military College was announced as the No. 2 seed in the four-team national championship playoff, so the 10-1 Bulldogs will host the 9-1 Hutchinson (Kansas) Community College Blue Dragons, who came in at No. 3.

They will play their semifinal Sunday, Dec. 8 in a 3:30 p.m. kickoff on Davenport Field. The game will be televised by ESPN’s online streaming channel, ESPN+.

GMC and Hutch’s rankings Monday were reversed from the previous week’s poll, but the Bulldogs received the higher seed when it really mattered. Only one point separated the two.

Bulldogs head coach Rob Manchester said the team had been preparing as if it would wind up as the No. 3 seed. Reservations for travel and lodging had already been made before Manchester and his staff watched the livestreamed selection show in the conference room inside GMC’s Ruark Athletic Complex. Those plans have now been canceled.

“We had no clue what was going to happen,” Manchester said Monday afternoon. “They said our name at No. 2 and we went crazy. It’s kind of icing on the cake. Obviously it’s great for our program, but I think this is bigger for the community and the institution.”

Early this season, the Blue Dragons owned the top spot in the rankings after defeating Iowa Western. Hutch was No. 1 from Sept. 9 all the way up to the Oct. 28 poll. An Oct. 26 loss to a three-loss Butler team dropped Hutch to No. 3. Meanwhile, GMC had just gone out west to Utah and defeated perennial power Snow. The Bulldogs climbed from 3 to 2, owning that position for a couple of weeks before Hutch rose back up and tied GMC in polling points. Then the Blue Dragons took sole possession of second after grabbing one more win over a 1-10 Garden City team while GMC’s season was finished. Hutch’s lead in the poll was nine points, but the margin evaporated when the final rankings came out Monday.

NJCAA Division I football committee chair Jake Ripple, who’s also the athletic director for Kansas’ Dodge City Community College, spoke during Monday’s livestreamed selection show. He told NJCAA Network’s Zach McKinstry that No. 4 Northwest Mississippi’s finish this season played a factor in the 2-3 swap between GMC and Hutchinson, saying NW Mississippi’s performance “changed the points around a little bit” in the poll.

Going further into it, Ripple said, “I think, especially between Georgia Military and Hutch, it’s splitting hairs. I think they’re really good teams. It comes down to what you value in the grand scheme of things. One of the things I always talk about is I think head-to-head has to matter, which obviously Hutch would have an advantage there.”

Hutch defeated Iowa Western 38-37 in week two this season, but has not yet played GMC, whose only loss was to Iowa Western 42-41 in overtime back on Aug. 31.

“I think one of the things that other people talked about was the losses that people had,” Ripple went on. “Maybe, unfortunately for Hutch, it was the timing of the loss as Iowa Western’s and Georgia Military’s both came in the first two weeks of the season and Hutch’s came later in the year. I think it’s a natural thing, right or wrong, where that happens. I think that’s one of the natural things in polls.”

It’s the first playoff berth for GMC football since the NJCAA adopted the four-team playoff system in 2021.

“Hopefully we can show up and give them a game because they’re strong,” Manchester said of Hutch. “They’re always very good, but now they’ve got to deal with the traveling and all that kind of stuff. We’ll see what happens. We’re going to give it our best. I know that. Drew Dallas has Hutch as a premier junior college football team. I think we’re really good as well, but I think we’re going to have to go out there and try to play a perfect game. We’ve got to have an effort like maybe we did against Snow to have a chance. I think we’re deserving to be there. We’ve just got to get ready to go play.”

Two-time defending national champ and current No. 1 Iowa Western CC will host No. 4 Northwest Mississippi CC in the other semifinal Friday, Dec. 6. All four teams in the top four enter the playoff with one loss. Everyone else behind them had two or more.

The NJCAA DI national championship game is slated for 8:30 p.m. eastern on Dec. 18 at neutral site West Texas A&M University. ESPNU will televise the matchup.