Sports
McCloud growing into key role at Illinois State
Matthew Semisch
04/28/2015
There’s a big gulf in class between NCAA Division I basketball and NJCAA Division I hoops. Many junior college basketball players eventually sign with teams from four-year colleges, but only a rare few go the NCAA D-I route.
Bottineau native Justin McCloud is one of those few big juco success stories. After starring for two seasons at Bismarck State College (BSC), NCAA Division I school Illinois State University came calling and signed him.
McCloud began life as an ISU Redbird last season as a junior 6-foot-4 guard. He played in 30 games in his first year at the Normal, Ill., school, coming off of the bench on each occasion.
He found out that Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) basketball is much tougher top-to-bottom than he saw in the Mon-Dak Conference with BSC. As ISU approached the postseason in its recently-completed campaign, however, the Redbirds got hot and so did McCloud.
His perimeter shooting - 38.7 percent for the season from behind the three-point line - improved as the season went on. In the MVC tournament in St. Louis, his touch from the outside got particularly on-form.
That string began in the MVC quarterfinals against Evansville (Ind.) on March 6 at Scotttrade Center. McCloud came off the bench and scored six points on two buries from the outside in a 71-67 victory over the Aces.
The next day, he hit a key three-pointer to give ISU a four-point lead midway through the second half of a 65-62 upset win over eighth-ranked Wichita State in the semifinals. By taking out the Shockers, the tournament’s No. 1 seed, McCloud and the Redbirds found themselves one game away from an automatic berth into the NCAA tournament.
Unfortunately for them, it wasn’t meant to be. No. 11 Northern Iowa overcame a 14-point halftime deficit in the conference title game on March 8 to down ISU 69-60.
McCloud played a key role in the success the Redbirds did have in the MVC tourney final. He finished 3-for-4 from behind the three-point line against UNI and scored nine points.
That loss to the Panthers denied ISU a spot in the NCAA tournament. The Redbirds did, however, land a place in the National Invitational Tournament (NIT), a second-tier postseason competition.
McCloud played 16 minutes but was held scoreless in a first-round 69-56 victory over Wisconsin-Green Bay on March 18. A week later, he came off the bench in a 50-49 second-round loss at Old Dominion (Va.).
ISU finished its 2014-15 season with a 22-13 record.
The MVC tournament was the coming-out party, though, for McCloud. Mullen felt that McCloud had improved as the season went on but put in his biggest performances yet in St. Louis.
“What Justin did this year was a matter of just getting better as we went along,” Mullen said. “Down the stretch, the last 10 or 12 games, he was playing more, shot the heck out of the ball and he was unbelievably valuable for us in our conference tournament.
“We don’t get to that championship game without him. He got better as the season went on and I think he’ll only continue to get better.”
Reflecting on his junior season, McCloud feels that his role with the team became bigger as he became more comfortable in his transition from junior college ball to ISU.
“The season was kind of up-and-down for me individually and the same for us as a team,” he said. “I wasn’t playing as much as I’d have liked early on but earned more playing time and experience and played more and more comfortable.
“As that happened, everything started coming together and we played our best basketball towards the end of the season and in the Valley tournament I just went out and played my game and played pretty well, and I felt like we surprised a lot of people there.”
McCloud, a business major, plans to become a coach and business teacher after college.