Gaston College closes regular season by clinching outright Region 10 basketball championship

Gaston College's basketball team is undisputed outright Region 10 champions.

The Rhinos, who clinched the No. 1 seed in their home finale on Sunday, ended their regular season with a convincing 98-83 win at Caldwell Tech on Thursday night.

The victory wrapped up the school's second outright league title and fourth overall league championship.

"It feels good," said Gaston College coach Benny Moss, whose team finished the regular season with a 27-3 overall record and 12-2 Region 10 mark. "I'm proud of our guys for staying focused. It's something we've preached about from Day One.
"Once we got on campus and got in the weight room when school started in September, we talked about how it's a process and there's a standard with our goal being to win the league championship. And we went on the road and got a heckuva win to finish the regular season and win that title."

Gaston College won or shared three straight old N.C. Community College Conference titles from 1970 to 1972 with the 1970 championship a perfect 12-0 league record in the Western Division.

In Thursday's victory, sophomore guard E.J. Joyner had the highest-scoring game in modern school history and the ninth 40-point game in all time school history.

Joyner tallied 40 points on 15 of 22 field goal shooting (four of six on 3-pointers) and six of six from the free throw line.

The previous record since the school resumed athletics in 2021 was 36 points by Jaylen Bates in the 2021-22 season finale.

In the 1964 to 1972 era, five players surpassed 40 points eight times highlighted by the school-record 54 points from Leonard Hamilton in January 1968. Jim Turpin had three 40-point games, Barry Faith two and Jimmy Crume and Charles Hamilton had one each.

"E.J. played really well," said Moss, who brought Joyner off the bench in hopes of getting a spark. "We put him in situations to get into the paint and he made the right decisions.
"He hit drives and layups but he also was four for six from 3. When he makes those shots, he's hard to guard."

Joyner also had five assists and four rebounds for the Rhinos, who got 17 points from leading scorer Kaleb Siler.

Gaston College is now off until March 13 when it'll meet the winner of a first round Region 10 tournament game at Richard Bland in one of the two semifinal games.

Should the Rhinos win that March 13 semifinal, they'll advance to the March 14 Region 10 championship game that will send its winner to the National Junior College Athletic Association championship tournament in Hutchinson, Kansas from March 21 to March 28.