Cougars win overtime thriller at Butler County

Cougars win overtime thriller at Butler County
The Barton County men's basketball team continues to make its late-season push in the Jayhawk West Conference, winning a thrilling 85-82 overtime contest on the road against Butler County Saturday night. The win moved the Cougars to 19-8 overall this season and 8-5 in the Jayhawk West.

Highlights
The Cougars only lead of regulation was at 1-0. Barton County trailed by as many as 9 points in the contest and found themselves down by 7 in the final two minutes. But some missed free throws by Butler County and some key Barton County hoops allowed the Cougars to tie the contest and send it into overtime at 72-all. Perhaps the biggest hoop on the game was knocked down by Rapheal Posey, who drilled a trey to cut the score to 71-70. After the Grizzlies hit 1 of 2 free throws, Robert Whaley got a key tip-in that evened the score at 72-all. Butler County had one last shot, but good defense by the Cougars didn't allow the Grizzlies a good look at the basket and the shot failed to hit the rim.

In overtime, Barton got off to an early lead, but Butler came back to take a 1-point lead. A key steal by Jason Carter as well as two clutch free throws each by Carter and Whaley in the final minute helped preserve the win for the Cougars -- their third in a row.

Whaley and Carter each scored career-highs of 30 points in the contest. Whaley hit 12-of-20 shots from the floor and snagged a game-high 10 rebounds to go with three blocked shots. Posey added 12 points, keyed by perhaps the biggest field goal of the game in waning moments of regulations.

Butler County also had a duo of big scorers as well as Derek Cline netted a game-high 32 points and Chris Lawson added 27. James Peters, who came in averaging 17.5 points and eight rebounds was held to four points and two rebounds before fouling out.

Next Up
The Cougars will try to make it four wins in a row for the first time since Barton County jumped out to an 11-0 start and climbed as high as No. 2 in the rankings when Hutchinson visits the Hill Wednesday. The game will also be a battle for a strong hold on third place in the conference with Barton standing at 8-5 in the West and Hutch at 7-5. Seward County leads the conference at 9-3 and Dodge City is 9-4. The Blue Dragons are 19-7 overall and snagged a 77-73 win earlier this year over Barton at the Sports Arena. Tip is set for 8 p.m.

Stats
Game boxes and cumulative stats can be found at the following website.

Barton County Men's Basketball Online at http://www.barton.cc.ks.us/sports/MB_01-02/mbasketball_01-02.htm