Hutchinson CC Sports Information

Winners of five games in a row - the last four by an average of 45.2 points per game - the No. 5-ranked Hutchinson Community College football team will play the No. 8-ranked Hinds Eagles at 1 p.m. on Saturday in the 12th Salt City Bowl.

The Salt City Bowl makes its return after a one-year hiatus because of the Covid-19 Pandemic last season.

The Blue Dragons will be making their 24th bowl appearance in team history and their 10th in the Salt City Bowl. Hutchinson is 14-7-2 overall in bowl games and 8-1 in the Salt City Bowl.

Hinds will be making its 10th all-time bowl appearance. The Eagles are 3-6 in previous bowl games. The Eagles last played in a bowl game in 2019, the Graphic Edge Bowl in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and lost to Iowa Western 34-19. The last bowl win for Hinds came 2000, a 27-12 win over Southwest Mississippi in the Mississippi Magnolia Bowl.

The Blue Dragons (8-2) enter the bowl season as the hottest team in the nation. The Dragons rolled through the Jayhawk Conference playoffs with a combined score of 168-19 with wins over Highland No. 5 Independence and No. 11 Garden City. Hutchinson has won five in a row entering Saturday.

Hinds (8-3) was the Mississippi Conference South Division co-champion and playoff runner-up this season. The Eagles knocked off No. 1 East Mississippi 42-41 in overtime in the MCCAA playoff semifinals, but fell to Northwest Mississippi 56-21 in the championship game one week later.

Saturday's game will be only the second time in Salt City Bowl history that a match-up will have two Top 10 teams squaring off. The other came in 2015 when No. 3 Snow College and No. 9 Dodge City squared off.

The 2021 Salt City Bowl has another first with 1,000-yard running backs being featured. Hutchinson's Anwar Lewis, who was named the KJCCC Offensive Player the Year on Thursday, rushed for 1,063 yards and 11 touchdowns. Hinds' Jeffrey Pittman rushed for 1,019 yards and a nation's best 21 rushing touchdowns.

Saturday's matchup will be the first between Hutchinson and Hinds and it will be the Blue Dragons' first-ever encounter against a MCCAA team. The last KJCCC-MCCAA matchup came in the 2017 national championship game featuring Garden City and East Mississippi.