Ark City scoring sensation leads Southwestern men to KCAC basketball tournament title

Arkansas City native Cevin Clark has blossomed into one of the premier scorers in the country at the NAIA level this season for the Southwestern College men’s basketball team.

Clark, who was a second team NAIA All-American last season, has been even better in his junior season at Southwestern, as he ranks fourth in the country with his 24.4-point scoring average.

The 5-foot-11 guard is coming off his best stretch of the season to date, as he totaled 106 points in three games to lead Southwestern to the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference tournament championship this past Monday at Hartman Arena in Park City. Clark only scored 29 points in the 83-74 victory over Bethel to punch the No. 22-ranked Moundbuilders’ ticket back to the national tournament.

“I’m not surprised at how good of a scorer he is, but I am surprised at how he does it at an elite level at all three levels,” Southwestern coach Matt O’Brien said. “When we recruited him, I knew he was an elite 3-point shooter and I thought he was a good mid-range shooter and he could score around the basket. But he’s really become elite at all three levels.

“He’s just relentless to the basket and he causes havoc around the rim and that’s really surprised me. We had a National Player of the Year four years back, but Cevin is as creative as they come at scoring.”

Clark was a dynamite shooter in high school at Arkansas City and found immediate success at Cowley College, but he has put in the work to become much more than just a shooter.

While he had another impressive season beyond the arc as a junior — Clark made 3.2 triples per game at a 45% clip — he only attempted a total of 16 3-pointers in three games during the KCAC tournament. The majority of his scoring came at the rim or from the foul line, where he made 39 of 42 free throws for 93% accuracy.

But what O’Brien loved the most about Clark’s championship game performance didn’t involve his offense at all. It was the fact that the star player took four charges.

“When you get to these championship games, it’s all about big-time players making big-time plays,” O’Brien said. “When you’ve got guys that can compete at a high level and are not afraid of the stage, that’s what it takes.”

Clark is far from the only local player who has made an impact this season for Southwestern, which improved to 25-6 this season. Halstead native Andrew O’Brien has been an invaluable glue player in the starting lineup, while fellow Arkansas City native Cooper Pierce is another starter and Mulvane’s Trey Abasolo is a key contributor off the bench.

“It’s always fun playing in Hartman Arena when we have so many local kids,” O’Brien said. “We’ve got a lot of guys who play for each other and play the right way. It’s been a fun couple of years with a lot of local kids on our team.”

Southwestern’s run to the KCAC title, which included a 25-point thrashing of No. 7-ranked Oklahoma Wesleyan in a game where Clark poured in 33 points, showed the potential of the team.

The team will learn its place in the bracket of the NAIA national tournament, which begins on March 7, on Thursday night. O’Brien is optimistic this team can advance past the round of 16, where the team stalled out in 2018 and 2019.

“This team has as high of a ceiling as I’ve coached,” O’Brien said. “That 2019 team had a high ceiling, probably the talent level of a Final Four team. This team can go far too with their work ethic and character and the way they play for each other. If we can shoot the ball well, then we can beat anyone in the country. If we get hot, we can win some big-time games and string three or four games in a row and be right there in the end.”